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Immersive audiomotor game play enhances neural and perceptual salience of weak signals in noise

Author(s)
Hancock, Kenneth E.; Polley, Daniel B.; Whitton, Jonathon Paul
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Abstract
All sensory systems face the fundamental challenge of encoding weak signals in noisy backgrounds. Although discrimination abilities can improve with practice, these benefits rarely generalize to untrained stimulus dimensions. Inspired by recent findings that action video game training can impart a broader spectrum of benefits than traditional perceptual learning paradigms, we trained adult humans and mice in an immersive audio game that challenged them to forage for hidden auditory targets in a 2D soundscape. Both species learned to modulate their angular search vectors and target approach velocities based on real-time changes in the level of a weak tone embedded in broadband noise. In humans, mastery of this tone in noise task generalized to an improved ability to comprehend spoken sentences in speech babble noise. Neural plasticity in the auditory cortex of trained mice supported improved decoding of low-intensity sounds at the training frequency and an enhanced resistance to interference from background masking noise. These findings highlight the potential to improve the neural and perceptual salience of degraded sensory stimuli through immersive computerized games.
Date issued
2014-06
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/92744
Department
Harvard University--MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)
Citation
Whitton, Jonathon P., Kenneth E. Hancock, and Daniel B. Polley. “Immersive Audiomotor Game Play Enhances Neural and Perceptual Salience of Weak Signals in Noise.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 25 (June 9, 2014): E2606–E2615.
Version: Final published version
ISSN
0027-8424
1091-6490

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