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- Title
The ecological cocktail party: Measuring brain activity during an auditory oddball task with background noise.
- Authors
Scanlon, Joanna E. M.; Cormier, Danielle L.; Townsend, Kimberley A.; Kuziek, Jonathan W. P.; Mathewson, Kyle E.
- Abstract
Most experiments using EEG recordings take place in highly isolated and restricted environments, limiting their applicability to real‐life scenarios. New technologies for mobile EEG are changing this by allowing EEG recording to take place outside of the laboratory. However, before results from experiments performed outside the laboratory can be fully understood, the effects of ecological stimuli on brain activity during cognitive tasks must be examined. In this experiment, participants performed an auditory oddball task while also listening to concurrent background noises of silence, white noise, and outdoor ecological sounds, as well as a condition in which the tones themselves were at a low volume. We found a significantly increased N1 and decreased P2 when participants performed the task with outdoor sounds and white noise in the background, with the largest differences in the outdoor sound condition. This modulation in the N1 and P2 replicates what we have previously found outside while people rode bicycles. No behavioral differences were found in response to the target tones. We interpret these modulations in early ERPs as indicative of sensory filtering of background sounds and that ecologically valid sounds require more filtering than simple synthetic sounds. Our results reveal that much of what we understand about the brain will need to be updated as cognitive neuroscience research begins to step outside of the lab. Most EEG experiments take place in isolated situations; however, new technology is allowing scientists to bring EEG into the real world. What happens when these outdoor scenarios introduce background noise or change subjective task volume? In this study, we investigated the effects of background noise, both ecological and synthetic in nature, as well as decreased overall volume, during an auditory oddball task. We found we were able to replicate modulations in the N1 and P2 observed in a previous outdoor EEG study using only background noise, thereby demonstrating the impact of auditory environment on auditory brain processing.
- Subjects
COCKTAIL parties; NOISE; WHITE noise; COGNITIVE neuroscience; SCIENTISTS
- Publication
Psychophysiology, 2019, Vol 56, Issue 11, pN.PAG
- ISSN
0048-5772
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/psyp.13435