Neural Bases for Working Memory of Natural Sound Textures

Multivariate auditory-cortex patterns encode sound texture category more strongly for 2s than 0.1s stimuli, regardless of whether participants performed texture discrimination or loudness discrimination.

• Why it matters: Encoding duration is linked to how well auditory texture information can be maintained, but the neural mechanisms separating sensory encoding from maintenance are unclear.
• What they did: Participants completed delayed match-to-sample tasks (texture discrimination and comparison loudness) with stimuli presented for 0.1s or 2s, combining behavioral sensitivity with fMRI during maintenance.
• The result: Auditory cortex showed no univariate duration effect during maintenance and no duration effect on texture decoding in MTL, while MTL multivariate patterns distinguished texture from loudness tasks after 2s.