Rapid ocular responses are modulated by bottom-up-driven auditory salience
Despite the prevalent use of alerting sounds in alarms and human–machine interface systems and the long-hypothesized role of the auditory system as the brain's “early warning system,” we have only a rudimentary understanding of what determines auditory salience—the automatic attraction of atten...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Society for Neuroscience
2019
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| _version_ | 1826264118081880064 |
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| author | Zhao, S Yum, NW Benjamin, L Benhamou, E Yoneya, M Furukawa, S Dick, F Slaney, M Chait, M |
| author_facet | Zhao, S Yum, NW Benjamin, L Benhamou, E Yoneya, M Furukawa, S Dick, F Slaney, M Chait, M |
| author_sort | Zhao, S |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | Despite the prevalent use of alerting sounds in alarms and human–machine interface systems and the long-hypothesized role of the auditory system as the brain's “early warning system,” we have only a rudimentary understanding of what determines auditory salience—the automatic attraction of attention by sound—and which brain mechanisms underlie this process. A major roadblock has been the lack of a robust, objective means of quantifying sound-driven attentional capture. Here we demonstrate that: (1) a reliable salience scale can be obtained from crowd-sourcing (N = 911), (2) acoustic roughness appears to be a driving feature behind this scaling, consistent with previous reports implicating roughness in the perceptual distinctiveness of sounds, and (3) crowd-sourced auditory salience correlates with objective autonomic measures. Specifically, we show that a salience ranking obtained from online raters correlated robustly with the superior colliculus-mediated ocular freezing response, microsaccadic inhibition (MSI), measured in naive, passively listening human participants (of either sex). More salient sounds evoked earlier and larger MSI, consistent with a faster orienting response. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that MSI reflects a general reorienting response that is evoked by potentially behaviorally important events regardless of their modality.
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SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Microsaccades are small, rapid, fixational eye movements that are measurable with sensitive eye-tracking equipment. We reveal a novel, robust link between microsaccade dynamics and the subjective salience of brief sounds (salience rankings obtained from a large number of participants in an online experiment): Within 300 ms of sound onset, the eyes of naive, passively listening participants demonstrate different microsaccade patterns as a function of the sound's crowd-sourced salience. These results position the superior colliculus (hypothesized to underlie microsaccade generation) as an important brain area to investigate in the context of a putative multimodal salience hub. They also demonstrate an objective means for quantifying auditory salience. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T20:02:37Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:27d5f74f-29ab-4079-95e8-ae1e203cd94d |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T20:02:37Z |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| publisher | Society for Neuroscience |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:27d5f74f-29ab-4079-95e8-ae1e203cd94d2022-03-26T12:09:13ZRapid ocular responses are modulated by bottom-up-driven auditory salienceJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:27d5f74f-29ab-4079-95e8-ae1e203cd94dEnglishSymplectic ElementsSociety for Neuroscience2019Zhao, SYum, NWBenjamin, LBenhamou, EYoneya, MFurukawa, SDick, FSlaney, MChait, MDespite the prevalent use of alerting sounds in alarms and human–machine interface systems and the long-hypothesized role of the auditory system as the brain's “early warning system,” we have only a rudimentary understanding of what determines auditory salience—the automatic attraction of attention by sound—and which brain mechanisms underlie this process. A major roadblock has been the lack of a robust, objective means of quantifying sound-driven attentional capture. Here we demonstrate that: (1) a reliable salience scale can be obtained from crowd-sourcing (N = 911), (2) acoustic roughness appears to be a driving feature behind this scaling, consistent with previous reports implicating roughness in the perceptual distinctiveness of sounds, and (3) crowd-sourced auditory salience correlates with objective autonomic measures. Specifically, we show that a salience ranking obtained from online raters correlated robustly with the superior colliculus-mediated ocular freezing response, microsaccadic inhibition (MSI), measured in naive, passively listening human participants (of either sex). More salient sounds evoked earlier and larger MSI, consistent with a faster orienting response. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that MSI reflects a general reorienting response that is evoked by potentially behaviorally important events regardless of their modality. <br></br> SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Microsaccades are small, rapid, fixational eye movements that are measurable with sensitive eye-tracking equipment. We reveal a novel, robust link between microsaccade dynamics and the subjective salience of brief sounds (salience rankings obtained from a large number of participants in an online experiment): Within 300 ms of sound onset, the eyes of naive, passively listening participants demonstrate different microsaccade patterns as a function of the sound's crowd-sourced salience. These results position the superior colliculus (hypothesized to underlie microsaccade generation) as an important brain area to investigate in the context of a putative multimodal salience hub. They also demonstrate an objective means for quantifying auditory salience. |
| spellingShingle | Zhao, S Yum, NW Benjamin, L Benhamou, E Yoneya, M Furukawa, S Dick, F Slaney, M Chait, M Rapid ocular responses are modulated by bottom-up-driven auditory salience |
| title | Rapid ocular responses are modulated by bottom-up-driven auditory salience |
| title_full | Rapid ocular responses are modulated by bottom-up-driven auditory salience |
| title_fullStr | Rapid ocular responses are modulated by bottom-up-driven auditory salience |
| title_full_unstemmed | Rapid ocular responses are modulated by bottom-up-driven auditory salience |
| title_short | Rapid ocular responses are modulated by bottom-up-driven auditory salience |
| title_sort | rapid ocular responses are modulated by bottom up driven auditory salience |
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