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Updated: May 2, 2026
Measurement of Neurophysiological Signals of Ignoring and Attending Processes in Attention Control
Published on: July 5, 2015
Measuring auditory selective attention using frequency tagging
Hari M Bharadwaj1, Adrian K C Lee2, Barbara G Shinn-Cunningham3
1Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology, Boston University Boston, MA, USA ; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital Charlestown, MA, USA ; Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University Boston, MA, USA.
Auditory spatial attention enhances neural responses in the auditory cortex and a specific brain region (lPCS) involved in attention control. This study clarifies inconsistent findings in auditory steady-state response research.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Auditory Perception
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Background:
- Frequency tagging reveals attentional modulation of sensory responses, with visual steady-state responses (VSSR) showing clear enhancement and suppression.
- Auditory steady-state responses (ASSR) show inconsistent attentional modulation, potentially due to methodological limitations in previous studies.
- Prior auditory attention research often used dichotic stimuli and limited source analysis, unlike more natural binaural conditions and whole-brain modeling.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether methodological differences explain inconsistent findings in auditory spatial attention studies.
- To examine how spatially directed attention modulates the auditory steady-state response (ASSR) across the entire brain using advanced source modeling.
Main Methods:
- Participants attended to one of two competing, frequency-modulated speech streams presented binaurally from different locations.
- Magnetoencephalography (MEG) data were analyzed using distributed source modeling to estimate whole-brain ASSR modulation.
- Cortical source activity phase-locked to attended and unattended auditory streams was quantified.
Main Results:
- Attention significantly enhanced ASSR power at the attended stream's frequency in the contralateral auditory cortex.
- The modulation frequency of the attended stream also elicited phase-locked responses in the left precentral sulcus (lPCS), a region linked to spatial attention.
- The lPCS showed attention-specific responses, with no phase locking to the unattended stream, and modeling accounted for hemispheric asymmetries.
Conclusions:
- Spatially directed auditory attention enhances neural processing in both auditory cortex and attention-control regions like the lPCS.
- The lPCS engages in an attention-specific manner, contributing to the selection of attended auditory information.
- Advanced source modeling, considering binaural stimuli and cortical geometry, resolves discrepancies in previous ASSR attention research.
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