Papers by Henning Stracke
Maladaptive auditory cortex reorganization may contribute to the generation and maintenance of ti... more Maladaptive auditory cortex reorganization may contribute to the generation and maintenance of tinnitus. Because cortical organization can be modified by behavioral training, we attempted to reduce tinnitus loudness by exposing chronic tinnitus patients to self-chosen, enjoyable music, which was modified ("notched") to contain no energy in the frequency range surrounding the individual tinnitus frequency. After 12 months of regular listening, the target patient group (n = 8) showed significantly reduced subjective tinnitus loudness and concomitantly exhibited reduced evoked activity in auditory cortex areas corresponding to the tinnitus frequency compared to patients who had received an analogous placebo notched music treatment (n = 8). These findings indicate that tinnitus loudness can be significantly diminished by an enjoyable, low-cost, customtailored notched music treatment, potentially via reversing maladaptive auditory cortex reorganization.
IFMBE Proceedings, 2010
ABSTRACT Under natural environments, picking up relevant sound signals, which are embedded in oth... more ABSTRACT Under natural environments, picking up relevant sound signals, which are embedded in other irrelevant sound signals, is an important ability for animals including humans. Bottom-up and top-down driven attention seems to play an important role in this process. In the present studies, we investigated magnetic fields in humans that were evoked by pure tones embedded in band-eliminated noises during two different stimulus sequencing conditions (constant vs. random) and under two different auditory attentional conditions (focused vs. distracted) by means of magnetoencephalography. Constant stimulus sequencing was composed of identical pure tones overlaid with band-eliminated noises, whereas random sequencing was composed of pure tones of random frequencies overlaid with band-eliminated noises. We demonstrated that under focused auditory attention auditory evoked neural responses were sharper and larger in the constant sequencing condition than the random sequencing condition. On the contrary, the auditory evoked fields under distracted auditory attention were larger, but not sharper in the constant sequencing condition compared to the random sequencing condition. Therefore, our results indicate that bottom-up driven auditory attention may mainly amplify excitatory neural networks, whereas the top-down auditory attention may both amplify and sharpen the neural activity via excitatory and inhibitory neural networks. The combination of bottom-up and top-down driven auditory attention would improve auditory performance in noisy environments. Keywordsattention-sharpening-gain-N1m-auditory cortex
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, Jan 26, 2007
Attention improves auditory performance in noisy environments by either enhancing the processing ... more Attention improves auditory performance in noisy environments by either enhancing the processing of task-relevant stimuli ("gain"), suppressing task-irrelevant information ("sharpening"), or both. In the present study, we investigated the effect of focused auditory attention on the population-level frequency tuning in human auditory cortex by means of magnetoencephalography. Using complex stimuli consisting of a test tone superimposed on different band-eliminated noises during active listening or distracted listening conditions, we observed that focused auditory attention caused not only gain, but also sharpening of frequency tuning in human auditory cortex as reflected by the N1m auditory evoked response. This combination of gain and sharpening in the auditory cortex may contribute to better auditory performance during focused auditory attention.
Cerebral Cortex, 2009
The investigation of functional hemispheric asymmetries regarding auditory processing in the huma... more The investigation of functional hemispheric asymmetries regarding auditory processing in the human brain still remains a challenge. Classical lesion and recent neuroimaging studies indicated that speech is dominantly processed in the left hemisphere, whereas music is dominantly processed in the right. However, recent studies demonstrated that the functional hemispheric asymmetries were not limited to the processing of highly cognitive sound signals like speech and music but rather originated from the basic neural processing of elementary sound features, that is, spectral and temporal acoustic features. Here, in contrast to previous studies, we used carefully composed tones and pulse trains as stimuli, balanced the overall physical sound input between spectral and temporal change conditions, and demonstrated the time course of neural activity evoked by spectral versus temporal sound input change by means of magnetoencephalography (MEG). These original findings support the hypothesis that spectral change is dominantly processed in the right hemisphere, whereas temporal change is dominantly processed in the left.
Cerebral Cortex, 2009
1 These authors contributed equally.
BMC Neuroscience, 2009
Background: Under natural circumstances, attention plays an important role in extracting relevant... more Background: Under natural circumstances, attention plays an important role in extracting relevant auditory signals from simultaneously present, irrelevant noises. Excitatory and inhibitory neural activity, enhanced by attentional processes, seems to sharpen frequency tuning, contributing to improved auditory performance especially in noisy environments. In the present study, we investigated auditory magnetic fields in humans that were evoked by pure tones embedded in bandeliminated noises during two different stimulus sequencing conditions (constant vs. random) under auditory focused attention by means of magnetoencephalography (MEG).
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Papers by Henning Stracke