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1Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program and 2Departments of Biology, 3Electrical and Computer Engineering, and 4Linguistics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland; and 5State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Submitted 27 March 2007; accepted in final form 23 September 2007
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ABSTRACT |
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FM), magnetoencephalography (MEG) is used to investigate the elicited auditory steady-state response (aSSR) at relevant frequencies (AM, FM, AM + fFM). Previous work demonstrated that for sounds with slower FM dynamics (fFM < 5 Hz), the phase of the aSSR at AM tracked the FM; in other words, AM and FM features were co-tracked and co-represented by "phase modulation" encoding. This study explores the neural coding mechanism for stimuli with faster FM dynamics (
30 Hz), demonstrating that at faster rates (fFM > 5 Hz), there is a transition from pure phase modulation encoding to a single-upper-sideband (SSB) response (at frequency fAM + fFM) pattern. We propose that this unexpected SSB response can be explained by the additional involvement of subsidiary AM encoding responses simultaneously to, and in quadrature with, the ongoing phase modulation. These results, using MEG to reveal a possible neural encoding of specific acoustic properties, demonstrate more generally that physiological tests of encoding hypotheses can be performed noninvasively on human subjects, complementing invasive, single-unit recordings in animals. |
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INTRODUCTION |
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). Complex sounds, especially natural sounds, can be parametrically characterized by many acoustic and perceptual features, one among which is temporal modulation. Temporal modulations describe changes of a sound in amplitude (AM) or in frequency (FM). AM and FM are fundamental components of communication sounds, such as human speech and species-specific vocalizations, as well as music. In human psychophysical experiments with speech stimuli, low-frequency AM features were found to be crucial for speech identification and recognition (Drullman et al. 1994; Shannon et al. 1995), and FM cues were additionally shown to be important in speech recognition, particularly in noise (Zeng et al. 2005). Furthermore, these temporal modulation features are known to be encoded in the auditory system. Numerous neurophysiological studies in animals have indicated that precise timing information is preserved throughout the ascending auditory pathways (Eggermont and Ponton 2002; Elhilali et al. 2004; Heil 1997; Oertel 1997, 1999; Philips et al. 2002; Rose and Metherate 2005). Using reverse correlation techniques, it can be shown that the response properties of auditory cortical neurons are dominated by transient changes in both amplitude and frequency, reflecting their selectivity for AM and FM features in the stimulus sounds (deCharms et al. 1998; Depireux et al. 2001; Elhilali et al. 2004; Miller et al. 2002). Interestingly, the reverse approach, which makes the theoretical assumption that the auditory system's encoding mechanisms are shaped to represent natural sounds in the most optimal and efficient way, predicts a preponderance of AM and FM response patterns in the receptive fields of auditory cortical neurons (Klein et al. 2003; Lewicki 2002).
Magnetoencephalography (MEG), a noninvasive brain imaging technique, provides a macroscopic measure of spatiotemporal patterns of underlying neural ensemble activities at high temporal resolution (
1 ms), making it a suitable and efficient tool to track the processing of temporal modulation features in the human brain. The recorded MEG signals represent the neural population responses or system activities, which have long been suggested to play significant roles in encoding mechanisms (Nicolelis et al. 1997; Wilson and McNaughton 1993) but are difficult to access from traditional microscopic-level neurophysiological studies. Under the appropriate experimental circumstances, MEG data may provide an excellent link between macroscopic neural activity and the encoding mechanisms principally developed based on single-unit data.
It has been consistently demonstrated in animal neurophysiological studies that slow AM and FM rates are explicitly represented in the auditory cortex by temporal coding, since neurons fire phase-locked spikes in response to amplitude or frequency changes in the stimulus (e.g., Eggermont 1994; Liang et al. 2002; Schreiner and Urbas 1986; Wang et al. 2003). At faster stimulus modulation rates, rate coding (overall spike rate) instead of temporal coding (timed spike discharge) may be seen (Lu et al. 2001). Neuroimaging techniques have also been extensively used as a tool to study the processing and representation of temporal modulation features in human auditory cortex. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and intracortical recording experiments have revealed sustained cortical responses to AM and FM sound stimuli that vary in magnitude and shape as the stimulus modulation rates increase >10 Hz (Giraud et al. 2000; Harms and Melcher 2002; Haller et al. 2005; Hart et al. 2003; Langers et al. 2003; Liegeois-Chauvel et al. 2004). Ahissar et al. (2001) found that one component of the MEG signal correlated well with the slow temporal envelope of its speech stimulus and was able to predict its intelligibility. In most MEG and electroencephalographic (EEG) experiments on humans using AM or FM stimuli, the auditory steady-state response (aSSR), an elicited response with the same frequency of the corresponding stimulus modulation frequency, is the main approach to examining AM and FM representations. aSSRs have been found for stimulus modulation rates 200 Hz (Picton et al. 2003; Ross et al. 2000, 2005).
AM and FM have been widely studied in both animals and humans, where the auditory system is typically probed with either AM or FM stimuli. However, most natural communication sounds (e.g., human speech, marmoset calls, bird songs, etc.) contain simultaneous temporal modulations in both amplitude and frequency. In fact it is a standard mathematical result that any band-passed signal can be described in its entirety as simultaneous but separate AM and FM components (Papoulis 1962). In other words, AM and FM always co-occur and are inseparable acoustic features of an auditory object, and therefore the auditory system should be able to co-track them to achieve "perceptual unity" of the incoming sound. Note that co-tracking refers to a combinational encoding of AM and FM features, and it differs from simultaneous tracking, in which the resultant neuronal activity is simply a sum of the two separate tracking signals for AM and FM, respectively (see, e.g., Cariani 2004) (see also discussion on feature grouping in the following text). There have been at least two examples of such co-tracking found in auditory systems. In an experiment on ferrets using spectrotemporally complex sounds containing simultaneous AM and FM, cortical neurons (which are sensitive only to bandpassed versions of the original signal, due to cochlear processing) demonstrated the ability to fire spikes phase-locked to both slow-rate AM and fast-rate FM (Elhilali et al. 2004). In a study on human auditory processing, Patel and Balaban (2003) found that the phase of the MEG aSSR at the envelope modulation frequency could dynamically track tone-sequence stimuli, suggesting a relationship between AM and FM processing in auditory cortex and a possible co-tracking mechanism.
We employ acoustic stimuli sinusoidally modulated in both amplitude (AM, at rate AM) and frequency (FM, at rate FM). These stimuli are a simplification of natural sounds containing simultaneous AM and FM, but their dynamics can be described simply by the two frequency parameters AM and FM. In turn, we can examine their representations in the human brain by measuring the spectra of the neural MEG responses at frequencies related to these stimulus parameters. In addition, by varying these parameters, we can investigate coding transitions as a function of stimulus rate dynamics, perhaps analogous to the temporal-to-rate coding transition observed in click studies in marmoset auditory cortex (Lu et al. 2001).
In previous work (Luo et al. 2006), for stimuli with slow FM (FM < 5 Hz), we observed in the MEG signal spectral components at the AM frequency and two sidebands at AM – FM, AM, AM + FM. This spotlights "modulation encoding " and, in particular, phase modulation (PM) as a way to co-represent AM and FM simultaneously. Modulation is a widely used encoding scheme in both nature and electrical engineering. The most well-known engineering example is radio, in which the target signal (e.g., speech or music) is imposed on the radio station carrier signal by modulating the amplitude or frequency of the electromagnetic carrier signal, corresponding to AM radio or FM radio. There are a wide variety of other modulation encoding methods used for other radio transmission applications, including single sideband, single sideband with suppressed carrier, and double sideband with suppressed carrier. These encoding schemes have the advantage of efficiently transmitting signals even in the presence of noise. Modulation signals have a distinctive signature in their spectrum—the presence of one or two sidebands, with or without carrier, and different modulation-type signals (e.g., AM, FM, and PM signals) can be distinguished based on the phase relationships among those sidebands and the carrier. The same work confirmed PM encoding in the recorded MEG signals for stimuli with slow FM (FM < 5 Hz). Specifically, the neural SSR at the higher AM frequency AM provides a neural carrier that is modulated in its phase (PM) at the rate of the slower frequency FM.
In the current experiment, we employ stimuli with faster FM dynamics (FM 2.1–30 Hz) and investigate the possibility of forms of modulation encoding, for rates faster than 5 Hz, different from the previously observed PM encoding based on the failure of PM encoding at the highest rates employed in the earlier study. We find a transition from PM encoding to single sideband (SSB) encoding. The SSB response contains only the upper sideband at AM + FM, and the neural carrier at AM (i.e., the original SSR induced by the stimulus AM), but is missing the lower sideband at AM –FM. Neural models suggest that the appearance of SSB responses may be explained by the additional involvement of AM encoding. i.e., neurons for whom their neural carrier response at AM is modulated in its amplitude (not phase) at the slower frequency FM. In particular, a quadrature relationship (phase shift by 90°) between the PM and AM components of the response is necessary.
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METHODS |
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STIMULI.
Nine stimuli were created, using custom-written programs in MATLAB (The MathWorks, Natick, MA), with a sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz. The stimuli were sinusoidally frequency modulated tones with modulation frequencies (FM) of 2.1, 3.1, 5.1, 8.0, 10.3, 15.1, 20.1, 24.3, and 30 Hz and frequency deviation between 220 and 880 Hz. In addition, the entire stimulus amplitude was modulated sinusoidally at a fixed rate of 37 Hz (AM) with modulation depth 0.8. All stimuli were 10 s in duration and shaped by rising and falling 100-ms cosine squared ramps. Each stimulus was presented 10 times. Figure 1 shows the temporal waveform (top), the spectrogram (middle), and the spectrum (bottom) of two example stimuli, confirming that the stimulus sounds contain both a sinusoidally modulated temporal envelope at AM (37 Hz) and a sinusoidally modulated carrier frequency at FM. Because the frequency range of the carrier ranges from 220 to 880 Hz, the stimuli have the long-term broadband spectra shown in the bottom panel.
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4/36; average false alarm rate: 1/36). The entire experiment was divided into 4 blocks with breaks between each. Data for distracter stimuli were discarded, and only the data for normal stimuli were analyzed. MEG RECORDINGS. Eleven subjects with normal hearing and no neurological disorders provided informed consent before participating in the experiment. All experimental procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the University of Maryland. Before recording began, all subjects were trained to press a button to report the detection of a distracter stimulus. Neuromagnetic signals were collected continuously with a 157-channel whole-head MEG system (5 cm baseline axial gradiometer SQUID-based sensors, KIT, Kanazawa, Japan) in a magnetically shielded room, using a sampling rate of 1000 Hz and an on-line 100-Hz analog low-pass filter, with no high-pass filtering. Each subject's head position was determined via five coils attached to anatomical landmarks (nasion, left and right preauricular points, 2 forehead points) measured at the beginning and the end of recording to ensure that head movement was minimal. Head shape was digitized using a three-dimensional digitizer (Polhemus).
Data analysis
aSSR responses were obtained by calculating the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of the concatenated responses from 10 trials (100 s = 10 x 10 s) for each of the nine stimulus conditions (varying FM), giving frequency resolution 0.01 Hz. These calculations were computed for all 157 MEG channels, all nine stimulus conditions, and all 11 subjects. In addition, the phase coefficients were corrected to undo the phase delay introduced by the 60-Hz hardware notch filter. These Fourier coefficients were stored for further analysis for each subject. Examples of the DFT magnitudes are illustrated in Fig. 2.
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AM) were selected per subject. These were regarded as channels representative of auditory cortical activity and used for all further analysis; the remaining channels were not analyzed.
SIDEBAND FREQUENCIES.
Target sideband frequencies were defined for different FM as upper sideband (AM + FM) and lower sideband (AM –FM), leading to 18 (9 x 2) frequencies (upper: 39.1, 40.1, 42.1, 45, 47.3, 52.1, 57.1, 61.3, 67 Hz; lower: 34.9, 33.9, 31.9, 29, 26.7, 21.9, 16.9, 12.7, 7 Hz). The DFT amplitude and phase at every target sideband frequency were extracted for all 50 channels (per subject), and for every stimulus condition, giving a size 89100 = 18 x 9 x 50 x 11 data set (frequency x stimulus_condition x channel x subject).
SIDEBAND AMPLITUDE MATRIX.
We examined the presence of sideband patterns (AM ± FM) in the spectra of the MEG signal, a distinctive signature of modulation encoding, by checking whether each specific stimulus condition (characterized by stimulus FM) induced significant spectral peaks at corresponding sideband frequencies (AM ± FM) and not at other sideband frequencies.
For each subject, the amplitudes of a specific sideband frequency were examined for all nine stimulus conditions and for all 50 selected channels, and the results were summed across 50 channels, giving a 9-value vector, which was then normalized by dividing by its mean. This 9-value vector represented the normalized elicited spectral power at this specific sideband frequency under all nine stimulus conditions, so ideally, the maximum value will occur for the entry corresponding to the appropriate stimulus condition. The same procedure was followed for all sideband frequencies (9 upper and 9 lower sideband frequencies separately), giving two 9x9 matrices, corresponding to the upper sideband amplitude matrix (AUpper) and the lower sideband amplitude matrix (ALower). In each amplitude matrix, the nine rows represent the nine different target sideband frequencies (in AUpper: AM + FM; in ALower: AM – FM), and the nine columns represent the nine different stimulus conditions. Each element in the matrix represents the normalized spectral power at this specific sideband frequency (corresponding row) for a specific stimulus condition (corresponding column). Graphical examples of the sideband amplitude matrices can be seen in RESULTS (Fig. 3), illustrating the grand average of these sideband amplitude matrices across subjects.
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67 Hz, in the gamma band).
ENCODING-TYPE PARAMETER.
Both AM and PM encoding elicit a two-sideband spectrum pattern but with different phase relationships between the sidebands and carrier, characterized by the encoding-type parameter 
(itself a generalized phase taking on values between 0 and 2
). The encoding-type parameter is defined as
 | (1) |
is the phase at that frequency, upper = fAM + fFM, and lower = fAM – fFM. AM encoding produces near 0 (or 2) and PM encoding produces near (Luo et al. 2006). was calculated for all nine sideband frequency pairs under the corresponding stimulus condition, for all 50 selected channels, and for all 11 subjects. Circular statistics (Fisher 1996) were used to estimate the (circular) mean and (circular) SE of across n = 550 samples (50 channels x 11 subjects) for each of the nine sideband frequency pairs.
VECTOR STRENGTH OF .
The vector strength of (v, ranging between 0 and 1) is used to examine the robustness of the encoding-type parameter . Larger v indicates narrower distribution of , and smaller v indicates wider distribution of ; in fact 1 –v is mathematically equal to the circular variance of the distribution. The vector strength, defined as
 | (2) |
. In V, the nine rows represent the nine sideband frequency pairs (AM ± FM) and nine columns represent the nine different stimulus conditions. Each element in the matrix represents the v value of this specific sideband frequency pair (corresponding row) for a specific stimulus condition (corresponding column). Ideally, the corresponding stimulus condition should elicit a robustly narrow distribution and therefore the maximum v value in each row. Graphical examples of the vector strength matrix V can be seen in RESULTS (Fig. 4).
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Upperdiff and Lowerdiff, are used to examine the phase properties of upper and lower sideband frequencies, respectively, complementary to the amplitude properties of sidebands characterized by AUpper and ALower. They are defined as
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Upperdiff and Lowerdiff were calculated for all target sideband frequencies (9 upper sideband frequencies and 9 lower sideband frequencies), all selected 50 channels, all nine stimulus conditions, and all 11 subjects. The same circular statistics used to calculate were used to estimate the mean ± SE of Upperdiff and Lowerdiff. Their vector strengths, vUpperdiff and vLowerdiff, are defined analogously to the vector strength of in Eq. 2. These calculated vector strength values were used to construct two 9x9 vector strength matrices (VUpperdiff, VLowerdiff) using the same configuration as that for V. In addition, Upperdiff and Lowerdiff were then adjusted to compensate for their group delay (latency), as estimated by the slope of the Upperdiff-frequency and Lowerdiff-frequency curves, giving Upperdiffadj and Lowerdiffadj (which have the same vector strength and SEs as of Upperdiff and Lowerdiff). Graphical examples of the phase difference vector strength matrix can be seen in RESULTS (Fig. 5).
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Note that AIA is defined in terms of (AUpperdiff and ALowerdiff) rather than (AUpper and ALower) because the comparisons of the latter pair are confounded by the different signal-to-noise ratios at the upper and lower sideband frequencies. The former pair comparisons are based on the elicited power (power beyond the background power) at the two different frequencies.
SIMULATIONS.
We constructed a model neuron population the SSR amplitude and phase of which are both modulated by the stimulus FM. In this model, we posit that the phase modulation index is fixed (at /8) (as observed by Ross et al. (2001), but the AM index m may vary with FM. The goal was to see if an increase in the AM portion of the response, i.e., an increase in m, could account for the observed SSB for high FM rates
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As shown in Eq. 6, simulated encoding signals S(t) with neural carrier frequency of 37 Hz (AM) and modulation frequency of 8 Hz (1 example of FM) were created with additive Gaussian white noise (GWN) at a relative level of 15. The AM index m varies from 0 to 0.8. The parameter , characterizing the phase shift of AM contribution to S(t) in relation to the phase modulation contribution of S(t), varies from 0 to 2. We performed 300 simulations for each AM index parameter m from 0 to 0.8 in step of 0.08 and for each phase shift parameter from 0 to 2 in step of /4 and calculated parameters (Upperdiffadj, Lowerdiffadj, , AIA, AIv) of the simulated signals.
For comparison, we also constructed a model containing a pair of neural populations. The SSR amplitude of one population is modulated by the stimulus FM [AM encoding population, SAM(t)], whereas the SSR phase of the other population is modulated by the stimulus FM [PM encoding population, SPM(t)].
 | (7) |
Both SAM(t) and SPM(t) were created with carrier frequency of 37 Hz (AM) and modulation frequency of 8 Hz (1 example of FM). The phase modulation index in SPM(t) and the AM index in SAM(t) are fixed (at /8 and 0.25, respectively, as measured by Ross et al. 2001). The simulation mixed signal S(t) were created by combining SAM(t) and SPM(t) using different mixing weights 
(pure PM: = 0; pure AM: = 1) and then by adding GWN. The parameter , also characterizing the phase shift of AM contribution to S(t) in relation to the phase modulation contribution of S(t) varies from 0 to 2. The relative increase in the AM contribution to the response is given by the mixing weight parameter .
Functionally, this paired neural population model is not distinguishable from the previous single neural population model because both of them test for the effect of an increase in the AM contribution of the response. Specifically, in the single neural population model, the AM index parameter m was increased to simulate the increase in the AM contribution to the response; in the paired neural population model, it was the increase of mixing weights (pure PM: = 0; pure AM: = 1) that produced the effect of an increase in the AM contribution. Either could account for the observed SSB for high FM rates. However, they are different in the hypothesized underlying neuron population structure and encoding properties.
Slow FM experiment
The method used to perform the slow FM experiment has been described earlier (Luo et al. 2006), but the results have been re-analyzed here to complement the analysis of the fast FM experiment paradigm. Nine stimuli were created using the same MATLAB program with AM of 37 Hz and smaller FM (0.3, 0.5, 0.8, 1.0, 1.7, 2.1, 3.0, 5.0, 8.0 Hz). Twelve subjects participated in this experiment. The same experiment paradigm and MEG data acquisition condition as that of the fast FM experiment were used.
Instead of the 20 channels/subject selected in the previous analysis, 50 channels with maximum amplitude at 37 Hz (AM) were selected. The 50 channels always include the 20 channels selected previously. The Fourier coefficients for these selected 50 channels were re-analyzed using the same data analysis methods as described in the preceding text for the slow FM experiment for comparison with results of the fast FM experiment.
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RESULTS |
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Clear stimulus-evoked aSSR at AM (37 Hz) was observed for all subjects under all 9 stimulus conditions in both the fast and slow FM experiments because all the stimulus conditions have the same AM at 37 Hz and only differ in FM. Figure 2A shows the discrete Fourier transform of one channel of a representative subject under nine different stimulus conditions of the fast FM experiment. The spectrum shows a clear peak at 37 Hz (AM), as indicated by the black arrows. Figure 2B shows its corresponding phasor representations (Simon and Wang 2005), and here only stimulus condition 1 (FM = 2.1 Hz) is shown as an example. As in the case for the slow FM experiment (Luo et al. 2006), it indicates a clear bilateral auditory cortical origin of the aSSR at 37 Hz, but claims of localizability beyond that are not warranted.
aSSRs at sideband frequencies were also observed. As illustrated in Fig. 2A, each stimulus with different FM (2.1–30 Hz) elicited corresponding sidebands (here, only upper sidebands are shown), indicated by gray arrows. For example, for stimuli with FM of 8 Hz, the response spectrum showed a peak at 45 Hz (37 + 8 Hz); for stimuli with FM of 10.3 Hz, there was a peak at 47.3 Hz (37 + 10.3 Hz); for stimuli with AM of 15.1 Hz, a spectral peak at 52.1 Hz (37 + 15.1 Hz) was elicited. Note that Fig. 2A illustrates the spectrum of the same channel under nine different stimulus conditions, and it clearly indicates that in this case the observed sideband frequency peak was stimulus-elicited.
Direct FM-generated aSSR, i.e., at the frequencies of FM (2.1–30 Hz), were also observed, in agreement with previous findings (Dimitrijevic et al. 2001; Luo et al. 2006; Picton et al. 1987). For example, the stimulus with FM of 8 Hz elicited an aSSR response peak at 8 Hz, and the stimulus with FM of 30 Hz elicited an aSSR response peak at 30 Hz, in addition to any sidebands around the AM generated SSR.
Transition from two sidebands to one sideband
As can be seen in Fig. 2A, narrow-band system noise coexists with the spectral responses to be detected (AM, FM, sidebands), which in turn may make the direct detection of the narrowband response at sideband frequencies more difficult. A method to assess the significance of the narrowband response elicited at a target frequency by the corresponding stimulus, is by an across-condition comparison, shown in the sideband amplitude matrices (AUpper, ALower).
Figure 3 shows the grand average of the upper (AUpper) and lower (ALower) sideband amplitude matrices across 11 subjects, and for both the slow FM experiment (Fig. 3, A and D; FM: 0.3–8 Hz) and the fast FM experiment (Fig. 3, B and E; FM: 2.1–30 Hz). In these matrices, most rows peak on the diagonal, which indicates that those sideband frequencies (rows) were more strongly elicited by the corresponding stimulus (and not by any other stimulus condition). In addition, there are noticeable differences between AUpper (Fig. 3, A and B) and ALower (Fig. 3, D and E). Specifically, AUpper shows a dominant diagonal pattern, whereas this pattern was less expressed in ALower, especially in the high FM range (Fig. 3E).
Such asymmetrical performance between AUpper and ALower can be seen more clearly in plots below in Fig. 3, C and F, illustrating the corresponding nine-value diagonal value vector of AUpper and ALower, respectively. The slow FM experiment low-FM-range data (gray line) and the fast FM experiment high-FM-range data (black line) are plotted in the same figure for comparison. Note that there are four overlapping FM stimulus conditions (2.1, 3.1, 5.1, 8 Hz) that show consistently good results. The horizontal starred line indicates the mean amplitude level at this frequency, i.e., the noise floor. Specifically, for stimuli with low FM (<5 Hz), both upper and lower sidebands are strongly elicited [with the exception of 2 outliers in the upper sideband, FM at 0.3 and 0.5 Hz, which are artificially small due to system narrowband noise at 37.3 and 37.5 Hz (Luo et al. 2006)]. For stimuli with faster FM rates (5 Hz < FM < 24 Hz), there is an asymmetry between the upper and lower sideband amplitudes: as the modulation frequency increases, the lower sideband level decreases toward the noise floor, whereas the upper sideband level remains well above the noise floor. For the fastest stimuli (FM > 24 Hz), both upper and lower sidebands decrease to the noise floor. In summary, we observed a two-sideband-to-one-sideband spectral pattern transition with increasing stimulus FM (24.3 Hz) with the transition occurring at FM 5 Hz.
Analysis of the AUpperdiff and ALowerdiff parameters also shows a similar sideband transition occurring at FM 5 Hz.
Transition from PM to unreliable encoding-type parameter
Figure 4 summarizes the behavior of the encoding-type parameter for both the slow FM experiment (gray line) and the fast FM experiment (black line). Figure 4A shows the circular mean and SE of , which lies roughly in the PM encoding region () for slower FM (<5 Hz) and transitions into a regime of undetermined values with increasing FM rate (as stated in the preceding text, the outlier at FM = 0.3 Hz is due to the narrowband system noise at 37.3 Hz).
V, the vector strength of , was calculated to determine the robustness of this measurement of modulation encoding and the reliability of observed modulation encoding type. Figure 4B illustrates the entire matrix V and the corresponding diagonal value vectors for both the slow FM experiment and the fast FM experiment. Specifically, the V for the slow FM experiment (FM: 0.3–8 Hz, left matrix of upper panel) manifests a dominantly diagonal pattern, especially for FM < 5 Hz (1st to 7th row), compared with the V for the fast FM experiment (FM: 2.1–30 Hz, right matrix of top panel), in which only the first 3 rows (corresponding to FM of 2.1, 3.1, and 5.1 Hz) show a dominant diagonal. The corresponding diagonal value vectors (bottom) decrease to the baseline v value as stimulus FM increases, reflecting that the encoding-type parameter becomes increasingly noisier and more unreliable for faster stimulus FM (>5 Hz) with a trend of shifting to roughly the AM encoding region (0 or 2) in Fig. 4A. In summary, we observe a transition of from the PM encoding region () to unreliable and noisy values as the stimulus rate FM increases, with a transition point of FM 5 Hz.
Transition from symmetry to asymmetry in phase
There are two primary motivations to investigate the behavior of Upperdiff and Lowerdiff, the two subcomponents of . First, as stated in the preceding text, we found that becomes noisier and unreliable for FM > 5 Hz (Fig. 4), but at least the upper sideband response is still significantly elicited (Fig. 3, A and B), indicating the sustained presence of some form of modulation encoding. Therefore by examining the corresponding changes of these two subcomponents of , we can demonstrate the underlying reasons for becoming noisier. Second, we can use these subcomponents to investigate the phase performances for the upper and lower sidebands separately, as we did for amplitude analysis. From the signal processing side, the vector strengths of Upperdiff and Lowerdiff (vUpperdiff, vLowerdiff) reflect the temporal precision (latency, starting phase, etc.) of the elicited MEG response.
Figure 5 illustrates the VUpperdiff (A–C) and VLowerdiff (D–F) results for both the slow FM experiment (Fig. 5, A and D) and the fast FM experiment (Fig. 5, B and E). We can observe the dominantly diagonal pattern in most of the four matrices, indicating that these phase parameters (Upperdiff, Lowerdiff) manifests smaller variance (larger vector strength) under the corresponding stimulus conditions (compared with other stimulus conditions). In addition, there are clear differences between VUpperdiff (Fig. 5, A and B) and VLowerdiff (Fig. 5, D and E). Specifically, VUpperdiff shows a dominantly diagonal pattern, whereas this pattern is much murkier and noisier in VLowerdiff, especially for the high FM range (Fig. 5E). Such asymmetrical behavior between VUpperdiff and VLowerdiff is also reflected in Fig. 5, C and F, which illustrates the corresponding nine-value diagonal value vector of VUpperdiff and VLowerdiff,respectively, for both the slow FM experiment (gray line) and the fast FM experiment (black line). The horizontal starred line indicates the mean vector strength for this phase parameter across all stimulus conditions. Specifically, for stimuli with low FM (<5 Hz), vector strengths for both Upperdiff and Lowerdiff (vUpperdiff, vLowerdiff) were significantly above the noise floor (with the exception of the FM = 0.3 Hz outlier in vUpperdiff, due to system narrowband noise at 37.3). For stimuli with faster FM (FM > 5 Hz), there is an asymmetry between vUpperdiff and vLowerdiff:vLowerdiff decreases toward the noise floor (Fig. 5, A–C), whereas vUpperdiff remains well above (D–F). In summary, with increases in stimulus FM, we observe a symmetry-to-asymmetry transition in the vector strength of phase parameters between upper and lower sidebands, where the transition point is FM 5 Hz. This symmetry-to-asymmetry transition is similar to the two-to-one sideband transition in the amplitude matrix (Fig. 2), indicating a certain relationship between the two groups of parameters: the phase parameters (VUpperdiff, VLowerdiff) and the amplitude parameters (AUpper, ALower).
Additionally, Upperdiff and Lowerdiff were adjusted to compensate for a 40-ms group delay (latency) estimated by the slope of the Upperdiff-frequency and Lowerdiff-frequency curves. This 40-ms value also matches well with the results of Ross et al. (2000). The circular means and standard errors of the adjusted Upperdiff and Lowerdiff are plotted in Fig. 6A for comparison with the simulations.
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The strong correlation between the phase and amplitude parameters for both the slow FM experiment (triangle) and the fast FM experiment (circle) is summarized in Fig. 6, C and D, which plots the amplitude asymmetry index AIA and the phase vector strength asymmetry index AIV, respectively, as a function of FM. Specifically, both AIA and AIV are near zero for the lowest and highest FM ranges (FM < 5.1 Hz, FM > 20.1 Hz), indicating commensurate results in both amplitude and phase reliability between the upper and lower sidebands (as before, the 2 outliers at FM of 0.3 and 0.5 Hz are due to system narrowband noise at 37.3 and 37.5 Hz). For the middle FM range (5 Hz < FM < 20 Hz), both AIA and AIV increase significantly above zero, indicating the emergence of an asymmetry between the upper and lower sideband responses; here the asymmetry favors the upper sideband in both amplitude and phase. These results are consistent with the previous amplitude, encoding-type parameter, and phase results (Fig. 3–5), and they reconfirm the coding transition from pure PM encoding (2 elicited sidebands, robust phase at both sidebands, approximately ) to a different encoding strategy (elicited upper sideband only, robust phase at only upper sideband, becoming noisier and unreliable). In summary, a transition from PM encoding to single sideband encoding (SSB) is confirmed here.
Simulation results
Figure 6 shows simulation results for a single neural population model. The simulation results, a function of both AM index m and phase shift parameter are illustrated in Fig. 6, I–L, in matrix form. For each , all the simulations show complex transitions as m changes. The results for = /2 (dotted rectangle in Fig. 6, I–L), shown in Fig. 6, E–H, show transitions that are similar to those found in the data (Fig. 6, A–D), not only for the measured parameters (Fig. 6, A and B) but also for their distributions (Fig. 6, C and D). For other values of , the matching performance may be good for some of the parameters but not all of them. These results suggest that introduction of fixed 90° phase delay, a quadrature relationship, between the AM contribution to S(t) and the phase modulation contribution to S(t) is necessary to account for the observed PM-to-SSB transition as we observed. This simulation investigates whether a gradual increase in the AM contribution to the response (here by increasing the AM index m in the single neural population model) can account for the observed transition from pure PM response to SSB response. Therefore we compare the simulation performance (Fig. 6, E–H) as a function of m with the experiment results (Fig. 6, A–D) as a function of stimulus condition FM. Phase modulation index values other than /8 were tested, so no predictions are made regarding this index.
The simulation results for = [/2 (Fig. 6, E–H) can be divided into three regions: PM-dominated, PM-AM-mixture, and AM-dominated, corresponding to small, middle, and large m, respectively. The most interesting and relevant range is the mixture region. Specifically, as the role of the subsidiary AM encoding increases (increasing m), Upperdiffadj (black line) remains relatively fixed with small error bars throughout the range of m, whereas Lowerdiffadj (gray line) manifests a rough transition through and with larger error bars. At the same time, the encoding type parameter shows a transition from PM encoding region () to AM encoding region (0). As for the asymmetry index performance, both AIA and AIV are strongly positive in the mixture range, reflecting the dominance of the upper sideband in the signals. The simulation results match the empirical results in many facets (Fig. 6, A–D), suggesting that the observed transition from a PM encoding signal to a SSB signal may be due to the increasing importance of a subsidiary AM encoding mechanism (invoked in the simulation by increasing the AM index m) in addition to the already present PM encoding, as a monotonic function of FM.
Similar simulation results are found from the paired neural population model and thus not illustrated here. Specifically, the simulation results can also be divided into three regions: PM-dominated, PM-AM-mixture, and AM-dominated, corresponding to small, middle, and large , respectively. As increases, Upperdiffadj, Lowerdiffadj, , AIA, and AIV of simulated signals showed the similar transition pattern as that of single neural population model in Fig. 6, suggesting that additional involvement of activities of a subsidiary AM encoding neural population in the response of an already present PM encoding neural population could account for the observed transition from pure PM encoding to SSB signal. Importantly, it also requires a 90° phase shift between the two neural populations’ modulation signals [SAM(t) and SPM(t)]. Such a precise phase relationship between two independent neural populations is an extra required assumption, which leads us to favor and emphasize the single neural population model.
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DISCUSSION |
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AM = 37 Hz) and carrier frequencies (FM, FM = 0.3–30 Hz), the elicited MEG responses were analyzed. We observed a transition in the MEG responses, from pure PM encoding signals, to signals containing only the upper sideband in the spectrum (SSB). A neuronal model was constructed and suggested that the introduction of a subsidiary AM encoding mechanism onto the already present PM encoding would explain the occurrence of SSB encoding. Modulation encoding for feature grouping
Temporal modulation features characterize the dynamics in a sound. AM describes changes in temporal amplitude (envelope), and FM describes changes in carrier frequency (fine structure). Stimuli with temporal modulation features are often used to examine the extent to which sensory neurons can fire spikes following the temporal structures of the stimuli. For this reason, the concept of modulation is useful to describe both the stimulus dynamics and the corresponding stimulus-locked responses. Elhilali et al. (2004) have shown that in ferret AI, neural responses lock not only to envelope dynamics (e.g., AM), but also to the carrier dynamics (e.g., FM). Cariani (2004), among the many possible temporal neural codes, proposes multiplexing, a method widely used in telecommunications, as a perceptual grouping mechanism. With this view, the same neural element may be responsible for both concurrent representation and transmission of multiple signals. In accordance with this proposal, here, by observing a significant spectral peak with robust phase behavior at sideband frequencies, we demonstrate that modulation encoding, an efficient encoding method to multiplex two features’ representations, can track independent stimulus AM and FM simultaneously and in a single representation. It provides a natural means of perceptual grouping. This is in contrast to, for instance, the trivial case of responses locking to two simultaneous stimulus modulations only at the two separate rates (e.g., aSSR at the stimulus AM rate and at the stimulus FM rate, with no co-modulation), where the two responses do not fall inside a common, natural grouping.
Neural modulation encoding
The two most simple modulation encoding types are AM encoding and phase modulation (PM) encoding: these arise naturally when the aSSR amplitude or phase depend on the carrier frequency of the stimulus and so would be expected to occur when the carrier frequency is modulated. Correspondingly, neurons employing AM encoding (Luo et al. 2006) and PM encoding (Patel and Balaban 2004) have both been proposed. Both types of neurons fire spikes that are phase-locked to the stimulus AM (at frequency AM), but they differ in the way they encode FM features. Specifically, from one AM cycle to the next, the AM encoding neuron changes its firing rate, i.e., the magnitude of the envelope of the response over an entire cycle, to represent the stimulus-carrier frequency. In contrast, from one AM cycle to the next, the PM encoding neuron changes its firing pattern, i.e., at which time within the cycle the firing occurs, to represent the stimulus-carrier frequency. In other words, both the AM and PM neurons employ temporal coding to track the AM feature, but, from one AM cycle to the next, use rate or temporal coding, respectively, to represent the FM feature. Weakly electric fish also provide natural examples of a modulation-encoding neuron. This species needs to compare timing of sensory feedback from electric organ discharges received at different parts of its body surfaces to execute jamming avoidance. Interestingly, amplitude-sensitive and differential phase-sensitive neurons project to an overlapping area where neurons respond to simultaneous amplitude and phase modulations (Heiligenberg and Rose 1986; Kawasaki and Guo 1998).
Coding transitions
We observe a PM-to-SSB transition as FM increases from 0.3 to 30 Hz. Specifically, stimuli with slow FM (<5 Hz) elicit both significantly stronger peaks and robust phase at both upper and lower sideband frequencies, and the encoding-type parameter is robustly within the PM encoding region (). As stimulus FM increases (5 Hz < FM < 20 Hz), only upper sidebands are elicited and have robust phase, whereas the lower sideband decreases and has noisy phase. Correspondingly, the encoding-type parameter , the sum of phase parameters for the upper and lower sidebands, also becomes noisy and unreliable. We propose the engagement of a subsidiary AM encoding in addition to the already present PM encoding, which combine in such a way as to cancel the lower sideband, and thus accounts for the observed PM-to-SSB transition. Specifically, for stimuli with slow FM, the neurons rely solely on a PM encoding mechanism to track the AM and FM features simultaneously. As stimulus FM increases, these neurons also begin to employ an AM encoding mechanism, also co-representing AM and FM features. Then both AM and PM encoding mechanisms are present, adding constructively (for the upper sideband) and destructively (for the lower sideband) to generate a SSB signal and used for concurrent encoding.
The observed transition >5 Hz serves an additional role as a sanity check. If the observed modulation response produced only a single type of modulation (e.g., only PM or only AM) over a wide range of rates, it is quite possible that the observed modulation responses might merely be an epiphenomenon, having nothing to do with neural coding per se. The observed transition, however, especially to such a novel modulation response mechanism (SSB), makes this scenario substantially less plausible.
It is apparent that a PM encoding mechanism, as seen for slow FM stimuli, requires more temporal precision and resolution for co-representation and is thus also more resource intensive than an AM encoding mechanism, since it changes the spike firing time to indicate the carrier frequency. AM encoding, in contrast, requires less temporal precision and resolution and only roughly needs to change firing rate to track FM. Therefore it is reasonable that only PM encoding is involved when tracking stimuli with slower carrier frequency dynamics and that for tracking stimuli with faster FM requiring more neural resources, the relative contribution of the coarser and more economic AM encoding mechanism is increasingly engaged. These findings parallel findings in marmoset (Lu et al. 2001), using click train stimuli, where there is a temporal-to-rate coding switch as the click trains became faster. The different transitions frequencies (5 Hz found here vs. their 30 Hz) are undoubtedly due to the different stimuli (click trains vs. concurrent AM-FM stimuli) and their different encodings (straight rate/temporal vs. modulation encoding). Our results are also consistent with fMRI experiments (Giraud et al. 2000; Harms and Melcher 2002) that have documented changes in the shape and magnitude of sustained responses to AM and FM stimuli as modulation frequency increases. Psychophysical studies have also proposed FM-to-AM transduction (Saberi and Hafter 1995) and two-stage detection (Moore and Sek 1996) for FM sound perception. Although this body of research refers to pure AM or FM detection, the underlying ideas apply straightforwardly to our hypothesis.
Addressing alternative explanations
An alternative explanation for the asymmetry between upper and lower sideband performance that must be ruled out is the different signal-to-noise ratios at those frequencies. For example, the decreased performance at the lower sidebands for faster stimuli might be due to the stronger background noise at lower frequencies, where the lower sideband frequency (AM – FM) for higher FM is located, which in turn would lead to asymmetric results. To test this explanation, we analyzed the direct FM aSSR (aSSR at FM, not at a sideband), using the same amplitude matrix analysis as that of the sideband frequencies. Because some of the target FM frequencies (0.3–30 Hz) are located in an overlapping frequency region to that for lower sideband frequencies with deteriorated performance, if the poor performance for those lower sidebands was due to noisier background, the background noise would also influence the performance of the aSSR at FM. However, we did not find any decreased performance at this region; on the contrary, the responses at those FM frequencies were strongly elicited. Therefore the very same analysis on the same frequency region but using different criteria leads to diverse results, supporting that it is an encoding transition rather than a change in signal-to-noise that accounts for the asymmetry between upper and lower sideband performances. Additionally, the sideband amplitude analyses did not strongly depend on which sideband amplitude parameter pairs were used, ALower versus AUpper (which depend strongly on the signal to noise), or ALowerdiff versus AUpperdiff (which depend only weakly on the signal to noise).
Another possibility that can be ruled out is that it might not be a transition per se but rather an epiphenomenon due to a phase modulation index that grows with FM. An increasing phase modulation index (i.e., the parameter set to /8 in the simulations) might be thought to mimic the loss of sideband amplitude because it would spread the response power across more distant frequencies. The is can be ruled out for two reasons: first, only the parameter ALowerdiff vanishes at the transition, not AUpperdiff, whereas an increase in the phase modulation index would cause both to vanish or even if there were a coincidental increase in power, neither would vanish; and second, as stated in Luo et al. (2006), increasing the phase modulation index does not affect the encoding-type parameter until it becomes quite large (3), and so the amplitude reduction and change in encoding-type parameter a would not co-occur simultaneously.
It can also be shown that the transition is not present in the auditory nerve and so must be generation centrally (e.g. cortically). Simulations of auditory nerve fibers of varying characteristic frequency, responding to our stimuli with varying AM, were undertaken using gammatone filterbanks from the auditory toolbox (Slaney 1998). These simulations show that in the auditory nerve's response to the our stimuli show only AM and not PM encoding: there is an overall AM at AM (the neural carrier) and the amplitude of that modulation is itself modulated at FM. There is no evidence for PM encoding or a transition from AM encoding to any other modulation encoding, in the auditory nerve. Furthermore the AM encoding observed in this auditory nerve model is not seen at all in our cortical data. This effectively rules out any peripheral-only explanation of the modulation encoding transition seen in cortex.
Neurons performing specific phase delay
In our neuronal model, AM encoding signals required a specific phase relationship (90° phase shift) with PM encoding signals; this accounts well for the observed SSB signals. Neurons with a specific phase shift relative to other neurons have been observed in several studies. For example, in a sound localization study by Fitzpatrick et al. (2000), three types of ITD-sensitive neurons in the inferior colliculus (IC) were found (peak, trough, and intermediate); these differ in their characteristic phase even when they have the same characteristic delay. In other words, their response patterns are phase-shifted versions of one another. In an ITD discrimination model study, Hancock and Delgutte (2004) have also proposed that the involvement of a phase shift mechanism in a system of solely internal delays could predict psychophysical performances more accurately. In the visual domain, "lagged cells" have been reported in both LGN and V1 (DeValois et al. 2000; Saul and Humphrey 1990; Saul et al. 2005). These cells show a specific lagged phase (e.g., by 90°) in their responses compared with ordinary "nonlagged cells" and are argued to solve the problem of encoding long and variable delays because a given phase difference provides longer time differences at low frequencies. Thus the hypothesized phase shift in our model is not unrealistic, and most importantly, constructing an additional phase-shifted version of the encoding signal using a different coding scheme (here AM modulation encoding) seems to be an efficient way to establish a new way of representing modulation features.
Relationship with general neural oscillations
Brain rhythms are widely studied and are argued to have important functions in the cerebral cortex (see review by Sejnowski and Paulsen 2006). It has been suggested that gamma-band oscillations (40 Hz) may solve the binding problem (Bertrand and Tallon-Baudry 2000; Llinas and Ribary 1993; Singer and Gray 1995) by synchronously referring diverse fragmented sensory feature representations into a coherent temporal framework to achieve a single cognitive state. This 40-Hz oscillatory activity has been proposed to result from the resonant properties of the thalamocortical system (Llinas 2000) and interactions between excitatory and inhibitory neurons (Freeman 2000). It has also been suggested that the elicited aSSRs reflect the resetting of this 40-Hz brain rhythm by transients in the sensory input, which could also explain the maximum aSSR for modulation frequency 40 Hz across various stimulus types (Picton et al. 1987; Rees et al. 1986; Regan 1989; Ross et al. 2000; Stapells et al. 1984). A study of the aSSR to pure AM sound (Ross et al. 2000) systematically examined the effects of stimulus properties (modulation frequency, carrier frequency) on the aSSR (amplitude and phase). Their results suggest that properties of the 40-Hz brain oscillation are modulated by the incoming sensory stimulus. Therefore an alternative explanation for the encoding transition from the perspective of systems neuroscience is that it reflects a transition between brain states. Specifically, for stimuli with slow dynamics, the brain's 40-Hz rhythms are set by changes in the amplitude of the stimulus envelope (at rate AM), and the timing of this resetting response, which is reflected in the starting phase of this signal, depends on the fine structure of the incoming stimulus, here, the carrier frequency. As the stimulus fine structure modulations become faster, there arises a more complex pattern in the brain oscillations, which are still reset by envelope changes, whereas both the resetting gain and resetting phase depend on the incoming stimulus carrier frequency.
MEG and studies of neural coding
The majority of work on neural coding is principally based on data from single-unit recordings. Furthermore, computational models concerning coding are almost exclusively based on such data. The work presented here illustrates that there can be very explicit linking hypotheses that bridge the gap between animal and human work. Hemodynamic data (coming from fMRI or PET recordings) also provide valuable data in this regard but are only indirect indices of neural activity because their time scales are limited to the order of seconds. In contrast, the electrophysiological MEG data described in this work show that reasonable assumptions about neural coding, coupled with computational analyses, can tie together work across vastly separated scales. Our data suggest that there is a population of cortical neurons (or a paired set of populations) that co-encode independent AM and FM stimulus modulations in a naturally grouped manner. These neurons have not been recorded from individually in this experiment, yet their electromagnetic signature is evident via the MEG signal.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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FOOTNOTES |
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Address for reprint requests and other correspondence: H. Luo, State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Science, 15 Datun Rd., Beijing 100101, China (E-mail: luohuan{at}gmail.com)
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INTRODUCTION
