Tuning to natural stimulus dynamics in primary auditory cortex

The amplitude and pitch fluctuations of natural soundscapes often exhibit "1/f spectra" [1, 2], which means that large, abrupt changes in pitch or loudness occur proportionally less frequently in nature than gentle, gradual fluctuations. Furthermore, human listeners reportedly prefer 1/f distributed random melodies to melodies with faster (1/f ⁰) or slower (1/f ²) dynamics [3]. One might therefore suspect that neurons in the central auditory system may be tuned to 1/f dynamics, particularly given that recent reports provide evidence for tuning to 1/f dynamics in primary visual cortex [4]. To test whether neurons in primary auditory cortex (A1) are tuned to 1/f dynamics, we recorded responses to random tone complexes in which the fundamental frequency and the envelope were determined by statistically independent "1/f ^γ random walks," with γ set to values between 0.5 and 4. Many A1 neurons showed clear evidence of tuning and responded with higher firing rates to stimuli with γ between 1 and 1.5. Response patterns elicited by 1/f ^γ stimuli were more reproducible for values of γ close to 1. These findings indicate that auditory cortex is indeed tuned to the 1/f dynamics commonly found in the statistical distributions of natural soundscapes. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.