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From symbols to sounds: Visual symbolic information activates sound representations
Author(s) -
Widmann Andreas,
Kujala Teija,
Tervaniemi Mari,
Kujala Anu,
Schröger Erich
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2004.00208.x
Subject(s) - psychology , stimulus (psychology) , cognitive psychology , auditory cortex , communication , neuroscience
Expectations on forthcoming sounds can speed up responding to environmental changes and can, thus, be a basis for successful adaptation. The present study investigated event‐related brain potential (ERP) effects in situations where particular sounds were predicted on the basis of preceding visual information. Subjects had to map scorelike visual symbols to corresponding sounds. The sounds could be either congruent or occasionally incongruent with the corresponding symbol. When the auditory stimulation was incongruent with the visual information, a brain response was elicited starting as early as about 100 ms from the onset of the auditory stimulus. It had a bilateral frontal distribution and a polarity inversion at the mastoids compatible with the assumption of sources in auditory cortex. These results suggest that the auditory system can establish a representation of an expected stimulus on the basis of visual symbolic information.