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Adaptation In The Sensory Cortex Drives Bistable Switching During Auditory Stream Segregation, Nathan C. Higgins, Alexandra N. Scurry, Fang Jiang, David F. Little, Mounya Elhilali, Joel S. Snyder

Psychology Faculty Research

Current theories of perception emphasize the role of neural adaptation, inhibitory competition, and noise as key components that lead to switches in perception. Supporting evidence comes from neurophysiological findings of specific neural signatures in modality-specific and supramodal brain areas that appear to be critical to switches in perception. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study brain activity around the time of switches in perception while participants listened to a bistable auditory stream segregation stimulus, which can be heard as one integrated stream of tones or two segregated streams of tones. The auditory thalamus showed more activity around the time …