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- Title
Cortical Processing of Arithmetic and Simple Sentences in an Auditory Attention Task.
- Authors
Kulasingham, Joshua P.; Joshi, Neha H.; Rezaeizadeh, Mohsen; Simon, Jonathan Z.
- Abstract
Cortical processing of arithmetic and of language rely on both shared and task-specific neural mechanisms, which should also be dissociable from the particular sensory modality used to probe them. Here, spoken arithmetical and non-mathematical statements were employed to investigate neural processing of arithmetic, compared with general language processing, in an attention-modulated cocktail party paradigm. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) data were recorded from 22 human subjects listening to audio mixtures of spoken sentences and arithmetic equations while selectively attending to one of the two speech streams. Short sentences and simple equations were presented diotically at fixed and distinct word/symbol and sentence/equation rates. Critically, this allowed neural responses to acoustics, words, and symbols to be dissociated from responses to sentences and equations. Indeed, the simultaneous neural processing of the acoustics of words and symbols was observed in auditory cortex for both streams. Neural responses to sentences and equations, however, were predominantly to the attended stream, originating primarily from left temporal, and parietal areas, respectively. Additionally, these neural responses were correlated with behavioral performance in a deviant detection task. Source-localized temporal response functions (TRFs) revealed distinct cortical dynamics of responses to sentences in left temporal areas and equations in bilateral temporal, parietal, and motor areas. Finally, the target of attention could be decoded from MEG responses, especially in left superior parietal areas. In short, the neural responses to arithmetic and language are especially well segregated during the cocktail party paradigm, and the correlation with behavior suggests that they may be linked to successful comprehension or calculation.
- Subjects
AUDITORY selective attention; ARITHMETIC; AUDITORY cortex; COCKTAIL parties
- Publication
Journal of Neuroscience, 2021, Vol 41, Issue 38, p8023
- ISSN
0270-6474
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0269-21.2021