Rapid learning of unfamiliar sound patterns based on spectrotemporal matching mechanisms
Final Report Abstract
Over two funding periods the project sought to investigate human ability to extract and learn recurring sound patterns from the acoustic environment. This ability is crucial to the recognition and identification of meaningful auditory events and needs to be robust against variability in the input, that is, when instances of the same sound pattern vary in their exact acoustics (e.g., when different speakers pronounce the same word, or when different forms of background noise overlap a recurring sound pattern). The project proposed an approach that might particularly shed light on how “object templates” emerge from auditory experience on the basis of repeated presentations. It contained a series of behavioural and EEG studies to address questions, such as, how fast sensory learning of complex auditory patterns takes place, which mechanisms of pattern matching underlie sensory learning, how tolerant the auditory system is to certain forms of input variability, and to what extent different parts of a complex pattern contribute to an “object template”. Overall, the work resulting from the two funding periods of the project revealed that sensory learning of spectrotemporal auditory patterns occurs rapidly and is robust against gestaltpreserving variations of the input or small amounts of distortions regarding the exact acoustics of single pattern presentations. Such variations modulate the internal representation’s precision rather than the time course of pattern learning. This leads to the conclusions that within-pattern feature relations (rather than the exact feature values) are crucial for the formation of object templates and that automatic mechanisms of (correlative) pattern matching exist which allow for an efficient segregation of distortions from coherent input patterns. Overall, we characterized a row of specific markers in the EEG that can be used to track pattern matching and pattern learning – I) the MMN as an indirect marker of sensory memory trace formation, II) the periodicity-related increase in the SR which is modulated by periodicity strength and augmented by attention, and III) periodicity-related transient ERPs, parts of which reflect pattern matching while others reflect entrainment to the periodicity. The COVID19 pandemic, which affected the last active period of the project, had detrimental effects on the project’s progress: one originally proposed EEG experiment could not be carried out and needed to be replaced by a strand of behavioral online experiments following an alternative objective.
Publications
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(2015). Shifting pitch: time course of extracting regularities from unfamiliar complex sound patterns. In A. Widmann et al. (Eds.), Error signals from the Brain: 7th Mismatch Negativity Conference (pp. 90-91). Leipzig: University of Leipzig Press
Bader, M., Schröger, E., & Grimm, S.
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(2017). How regularity representations of short sound patterns that are based on relative or absolute pitch information establish over time: An EEG study. Plos One, 12(5), e0176981
Bader, M., Schröger, E., & Grimm, S.
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(2017). Predictive regularity representations within and between spectrotemporal patterns. In: Psychophysiology (Vol. 54, pp. S5-S5). Hoboken, NJ USA: Wiley
Grimm, S., Bader, M., Weise, A., & Schröger, E.
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(2021). Auditory Pattern Representations Under Conditions of Uncertainty—An ERP Study. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 15
Bader, M., Schröger, E., & Grimm, S.
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(2021). Change detection of auditory tonal patterns defined by absolute versus relative pitch information. A combined behavioural and EEG study. PloS One, 16(2), e0247495
Coy, N., Bader, M., Schröger, E., & Grimm, S.
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(2021). I might have heard this sound before – Determinants of perceptual learning and recognition of random acoustic patterns. 10th IMPRS NeuroCom Summer School, Virtual
Ringer, H., Schröger, E., & Grimm, S.
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(2021). Neural signatures of temporal regularity and recurring patterns in random tonal sound sequences. European Journal of Neuroscience, 53(8), 2740-2754
Hodapp, A., & Grimm, S.
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(2021). Within- and between-subject consistency of perceptual segmentation in periodic noise. In 20th World Congress of Psychophysiology (IOP2021)
Ringer, H., Schröger, E., & Grimm, S.
