ArticleNeuroImage2021
Attention reinforces human corticofugal system to aid speech perception in noise.
Article in NeuroImage, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed.
- Structural connectivity of auditory-linguistic brain networks predicts success in speech categorization and listening in noise.Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Do sung speech and background noise affect sentence repetition in dyslexia?Cognitive processing · 2026Article
- Article
- Motor signals modulate cortical but not subcortical processing of self-initiated sounds.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Microsaccade Direction Reveals the Variation in Auditory Selective Attention Processes.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- The auditory brainstem response to natural speech is not affected by selective attention.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Sleep Disturbances Associated With Hidden Hearing Loss: Insights From Human Data and a Mouse Model of Sleep Fragmentation.Brain and behavior · 2025Observational
- Dominant mid-to-high-frequency harmonics predict neural encoding and perception of concurrent vowels with large f0 differences.The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2025Article
- Effect of digital noise reduction processing on subcortical speech encoding and relationship to behavioral outcomes.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The role of attention in eliciting a musically induced visual motion aftereffect.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2025Article
- Sensory representations and pupil-indexed listening effort provide complementary contributions to multi-talker speech intelligibility.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Musicianship Modulates Cortical Effects of Attention on Processing Musical Triads.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- A genome-wide association study reveals a polygenic architecture of speech-in-noise deficits in individuals with self-reported normal hearing.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Short- and long-term neuroplasticity interact during the perceptual learning of concurrent speech.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Article
- Myogenic artifacts masquerade as neuroplasticity in the auditory frequency-following response.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
- Cortical Responses Time-Locked to Continuous Speech in the High-Gamma Band Depend on Selective Attention.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Duplex perception reveals brainstem auditory representations are modulated by listeners' ongoing percept for speech.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- Duplex perception reveals brainstem auditory representations are modulated by listeners' ongoing percept for speech.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Perceptual warping exposes categorical representations for speech in human brainstem responses.NeuroImage · 2023Article
- Cortical responses time-locked to continuous speech in the high-gamma band depend on selective attention.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Perceiving speech-in-noise (SIN) demands precise neural coding between brainstem and cortical levels of the hearing system. Attentional processes can then select and prioritize task-relevant cues over competing background noise for successful speech perception. In animal models, brainstem-cortical interplay is achieved via descending corticofugal projections from cortex that shape midbrain responses to behaviorally-relevant sounds. Attentional engagement of corticofugal feedback may assist SIN understanding but has never been confirmed and remains highly controversial in humans. To resolve these issues, we recorded source-level, anatomically constrained brainstem frequency-following responses (FFRs) and cortical event-related potentials (ERPs) to speech via high-density EEG while listeners performed rapid SIN identification tasks. We varied attention with active vs. passive listening scenarios whereas task difficulty was manipulated with additive noise interference. Active listening (but not arousal-control tasks) exaggerated both ERPs and FFRs, confirming attentional gain extends to lower subcortical levels of speech processing. We used functional connectivity to measure the directed strength of coupling between levels and characterize "bottom-up" vs. "top-down" (corticofugal) signaling within the auditory brainstem-cortical pathway. While attention strengthened connectivity bidirectionally, corticofugal transmission disengaged under passive (but not active) SIN listening. Our findings (i) show attention enhances the brain's transcription of speech even prior to cortex and (ii) establish a direct role of the human corticofugal feedback system as an aid to cocktail party speech perception.
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