Skip Navigation


Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on May 8, 2007
Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(1):145-150; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhm040
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
18/1/145    most recent
bhm040v2
bhm040v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (9)
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Bach, D. R.
Right arrow Articles by Seifritz, E.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Bach, D. R.
Right arrow Articles by Seifritz, E.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Rising Sound Intensity: An Intrinsic Warning Cue Activating the Amygdala

Dominik R. Bach1, Hartmut Schächinger2, John G. Neuhoff3, Fabrizio Esposito4, Francesco Di Salle5, Christoph Lehmann1, Marcus Herdener1, Klaus Scheffler6 and Erich Seifritz1,7

1 University Hospital of Psychiatry, University of Bern, 3000 Bern, Switzerland, 2 Department of Clinical Physiology, FB I—Psychobiology, University of Trier, 54290 Trier, Germany, 3 Department of Psychology, The College of Wooster, Wooster, OH 44691, USA, 4 Department of Neurological Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, 80127 Naples, Italy, 5 Department of Neuroscience, University of Pisa, 56127 Pisa, Italy, 6 Department of Radiology, University of Basel, 4031 Basel, Switzerland, 7 Department of Psychiatry, University of Basel, 4025 Basel, Switzerland

Address correspondence to Dominik R. Bach, Universitäre Psychiatrische Dienste Bern, Bolligenstrasse 111, 3000 Bern 60, Switzerland. Email: bach{at}puk.unibe.ch.

Human subjects overestimate the change of rising intensity sounds compared with falling intensity sounds. Rising sound intensity has therefore been proposed to be an intrinsic warning cue. In order to test this hypothesis, we presented rising, falling, and constant intensity sounds to healthy humans and gathered psychophysiological and behavioral responses. Brain activity was measured using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. We found that rising compared with falling sound intensity facilitates autonomic orienting reflex and phasic alertness to auditory targets. Rising intensity sounds produced neural activity in the amygdala, which was accompanied by activity in intraparietal sulcus, superior temporal sulcus, and temporal plane. Our results indicate that rising sound intensity is an elementary warning cue eliciting adaptive responses by recruiting attentional and physiological resources. Regions involved in cross-modal integration were activated by rising sound intensity, while the right-hemisphere phasic alertness network could not be supported by this study.

Key Words: amygdala • auditory looming • fMRI • orienting reflex • phasic alertness • skin conductance response


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Schizophr BullHome page
D. R. Bach, K. Buxtorf, W. K. Strik, J. G. Neuhoff, and E. Seifritz
Evidence for Impaired Sound Intensity Processing in Schizophrenia
Schizophr Bull, September 3, 2009; (2009) sbp092v1.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.