Wearing prisms to hear differently: After-effects of prism adaptation on auditory perception

Category

Journal Article

Authors

Michel, C., Bonnet, C., Podor, B., Bard, P., Poulin-Charronnat, B.

Year

2019

Title

Wearing prisms to hear differently: After-effects of prism adaptation on auditory perception

Journal / book / conference

Cortex

Abstract

Numerous studies showed that, after adaptation to a leftward optical deviation, pseudoneglect behavior (overrepresentation of the left part compared to the right part of the space) becomes neglect-like behavior (overrepresentation of the right part compared to the left part of the space). Cognitive after-effects have also been shown in cognitive processes that are not intrinsically spatial in nature, but show spatial association as numbers or letters. The spaceauditory frequency association (with low frequencies on the left and high frequencies on the right) raises the question of whether prism adaptation can produce after-effects on auditory
perception. We used a new experimental protocol, named the ‘auditory interval bisection judgment’,where participantshadto estimatewhat limit ofanauditory interval (loworhigh)a target frequency was closer to.We calculated the subjective auditory interval center. In pretest, there was a spontaneous bias of the subjective center of the auditory interval toward the
lower limit.Thatwasthe firstdemonstration of pseudoneglect behavior in auditory frequency representation. ANOVA realized on all participants did not show significant results of prism adaptation, but a posteriori analyses onmusicians showed that, after adaptation to a leftward optical deviation, there weremore target frequencies perceived as closer to the lower limit of
the auditory interval. This result corroborates the shift of the subjective center of the auditory interval toward high frequency limit. These innovative results are discussed in terms of putative neural substrates underpinning the transfer of visuomotor plasticity to auditory frequency perception.

Issue

115

Pages

123-132

Keywords

Prism adaptation, Auditory perception, Auditory interval, Bisection judgment

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