Data from: Acoustic and higher-level representations of naturalistic auditory scenes in human auditory and frontal cortex

This data set was analysed for the publication "Acoustic and higher-level representations of naturalistic auditory scenes in human auditory and frontal cortex" by Lars Hausfeld, Lars Riecke and Elia Formisano (10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.02.065). Anatomical and functional MRI was acquired at 7 Tesla and over the course of 3 sessions for each participant. Participants listened to natural auditory scenes consisting of three sound sources: voice, instrument and pure tone. To reveal effects of selective attention, participants were asked to listen to one of the three sources by performing a task.  

The dataset is arranged as follows:

- MRI data for each participant are contained in the participant-specific folders S[participant id]_MRIdata.zip

- Information and design, stimulation protocols and sounds are contained in DesignProtocolsSounds.zip

- README files contain necessary information on the MRI acquisition, experimental design and the coding of conditions

Please note additional information in the original publication

Abstract of corresponding manuscript

In everyday life, we are often confronted with auditory scenes comprising multiple simultaneous sounds. When listening to two simultaneous talkers, the neural representation of the attended talker is selectively enhanced in auditory cortex. However, it remains unknown whether and how this selective attention mechanism operates on representations of different natural sound categories. In this high-field fMRI study we presented participants with simultaneous voices and musical instruments while manipulating their focus of attention. We found an attentional enhancement of neural sound representations in temporal cortex at locations that depended on the attended category (i.e., voices or instruments). In contrast, we found that in frontal cortex the site of enhancement was independent of the attended category and the same regions could flexibly represent any attended sound regardless of its category. These results are relevant to elucidate the interacting mechanisms of bottom-up and top-down processing during real-life audition.

Author contact: lars.hausfeld@maastrichtuniversity.nl