Adaptation in sensory cortex drives bistable switching during auditory stream segregation

Current theories of perception emphasize the role of neural adaptation, inhibitory competition, and noise as key components that lead to switches in perception. Supporting evidence comes from neurophysiological findings of specific neural signatures in modality-specific and supramodal brain areas that appear to be critical to switches in perception. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study brain activity around the time of switches in perception while participants listened to a bistable auditory stream segregation stimulus, which can be heard as one integrated stream of tones or two segregated streams of tones. The auditory thalamus showed more activity around the time of a switch from segregated to integrated compared to stable perception of integrated; in contrast, the rostral-anterior cingulate cortex and the inferior parietal lobule showed more activity around the time of a switch from integrated to segregated compared to time periods of stable perception of segregated streams, consistent with prior findings of asymmetries in brain activity depending on switch direction. In sound-responsive areas in the auditory cortex, neural activity increased in strength preceding switches in perception and declined in strength over time following switches in perception. Such dynamics in auditory cortex are consistent with the role of adaptation proposed by computational models of visual and auditory bistable switching, whereby the strength of neural activity decreases in strength following a switch in perception, which eventually destabilizes the current percept enough to lead to a switch to an alternative percept.