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Original Research
26 July 2021
Cross-Modal Interaction Between Auditory and Visual Input Impacts Memory Retrieval
Viorica Marian
1 more and 
Scott R. Schroeder

How we perceive and learn about our environment is influenced by our prior experiences and existing representations of the world. Top-down cognitive processes, such as attention and expectations, can alter how we process sensory stimuli, both within a modality (e.g., effects of auditory experience on auditory perception), as well as across modalities (e.g., effects of visual feedback on sound localization). Here, we demonstrate that experience with different types of auditory input (spoken words vs. environmental sounds) modulates how humans remember concurrently-presented visual objects. Participants viewed a series of line drawings (e.g., picture of a cat) displayed in one of four quadrants while listening to a word or sound that was congruent (e.g., “cat” or <meow>), incongruent (e.g., “motorcycle” or <vroom–vroom>), or neutral (e.g., a meaningless pseudoword or a tonal beep) relative to the picture. Following the encoding phase, participants were presented with the original drawings plus new drawings and asked to indicate whether each one was “old” or “new.” If a drawing was designated as “old,” participants then reported where it had been displayed. We find that words and sounds both elicit more accurate memory for what objects were previously seen, but only congruent environmental sounds enhance memory for where objects were positioned – this, despite the fact that the auditory stimuli were not meaningful spatial cues of the objects’ locations on the screen. Given that during real-world listening conditions, environmental sounds, but not words, reliably originate from the location of their referents, listening to sounds may attune the visual dorsal pathway to facilitate attention and memory for objects’ locations. We propose that audio-visual associations in the environment and in our previous experience jointly contribute to visual memory, strengthening visual memory through exposure to auditory input.

17,856 views
21 citations
Ongoing LFP power and functional connectivity in A1 and PAF in controls and congenitally deaf cats in absence of stimulation. (A) Average LFP power spectra in supragranular A1 (A1supra), comparison between acoustic controls with intact cochlea (ACs, green), electric controls with acutely deafened cochlea (ECs, blue), and congenitally deaf cats (CDCs, red) in absence of a stimulus. Data computed from bipolar derivation LFPs. Trials with bursting and spindles were removed before analysis (see section “Materials and Methods”). (B) Same as A for infragranular layers in A1 (A1infra). (C) Average LFP power-spectra in PAF computed from unipolar LFPs. Note the LFP power scale difference. (D) A1supra – PAF functional connectivity in absence of stimulation, computed using pairwise phase consistency (PPC). (E) Same as D for A1infra – PAF functional connectivity. (A–E) Shaded areas represent standard errors of the mean. Statistical pairwise comparisons are shown for electric control vs. deaf (magenta line above the graph) and animals with intact cochleae vs. acutely deafened cochleae (cyan line above the graph) using the two-tailed Wilcoxon rank-sum test (false discovery rate corrected, p < 0.001).
Original Research
21 January 2021
Deafness Weakens Interareal Couplings in the Auditory Cortex
Prasandhya Astagiri Yusuf
3 more and 
Andrej Kral

The function of the cerebral cortex essentially depends on the ability to form functional assemblies across different cortical areas serving different functions. Here we investigated how developmental hearing experience affects functional and effective interareal connectivity in the auditory cortex in an animal model with years-long and complete auditory deprivation (deafness) from birth, the congenitally deaf cat (CDC). Using intracortical multielectrode arrays, neuronal activity of adult hearing controls and CDCs was registered in the primary auditory cortex and the secondary posterior auditory field (PAF). Ongoing activity as well as responses to acoustic stimulation (in adult hearing controls) and electric stimulation applied via cochlear implants (in adult hearing controls and CDCs) were analyzed. As functional connectivity measures pairwise phase consistency and Granger causality were used. While the number of coupled sites was nearly identical between controls and CDCs, a reduced coupling strength between the primary and the higher order field was found in CDCs under auditory stimulation. Such stimulus-related decoupling was particularly pronounced in the alpha band and in top–down direction. Ongoing connectivity did not show such a decoupling. These findings suggest that developmental experience is essential for functional interareal interactions during sensory processing. The outcomes demonstrate that corticocortical couplings, particularly top-down connectivity, are compromised following congenital sensory deprivation.

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