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Plastic changes in the auditory cortex of congenitally deaf cats following cochlear implantation.

Congenitally deaf cats were used as a model for human inborn deafness and auditory deprivation. The deaf cats were supplied with a cochlear implant, chronically exposed to an acoustic environment and conditioned to acoustic stimuli. In case of early implantation the cats learned to make use of the newly gained auditory channel behaviourally. Neurophysiological and fMRI data showed that the central auditory system was recruited, if implantation took place within a sensitive period of <6 months.

Animals↗

Functional specificity in the right human auditory cortex for perceiving pitch direction.

Previous lesion and functional imaging studies in humans suggest a greater involvement of right rather than left auditory cortical areas in certain aspects of pitch processing. In the present study, adaptive psychophysical procedures were used to determine auditory perceptual thresholds in 14 neurologically normal subjects, and in 31 patients who had undergone surgical resection from either the right or left temporal lobe for the relief of intractable epilepsy. In a subset of the patients, the lesion encroached significantly upon the gyrus of Heschl or its underlying white matter as determined from MRI analysis. Subjects were asked to perform two different perceptual tasks on the same set of stimuli. In a pitch discrimination task, the subject had to decide whether two elements of a pure tone pair were the same or different. In a task requiring the judgement of direction of pitch change, subjects decided whether pitch rose or fell from the first tone to the second. Thresholds were determined by measuring the minimum pitch difference required for correct task performance. Mean thresholds in the pitch discrimination task did not differ between patient groups and control subjects. In contrast, patients with temporal lobe excisions that encroached upon the gyrus of Heschl in the right hemisphere (but not in the left) showed significantly elevated thresholds when judging the direction of pitch change. These findings support a specialization of function linked to right auditory cortical areas for the processing of pitch direction, and specifically suggest a dissociation between simple sensory discrimination and higher order perception.

Adult↗

Influence of speech stimuli intensity on the activation of auditory cortex investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Understanding the impact of variations in the acoustic signal is critical for the development of auditory and language fMRI as an experimental tool. We describe the dependence of the BOLD signal and speech intelligibility on the intensity of auditory stimuli. Eighteen subjects were imaged on a 1.5-T MRI scanner. Speech stimuli were English monosyllabic words played at five intensity levels. Intrasubject reproducibility was measured on one subject by presenting the stimulus five times at the same intensity level. Intelligibility was measured during data acquisition as subjects signaled when hearing two targets. Each functional trial consisted of four cycles (30 s off-30 s on). Five oblique slices covering primary and association auditory areas were imaged. Activated voxels were identified by cross-correlation analysis and their percent signal change (delta S) was measured. Intersubject differences in activation extent, asymmetry, and dependence on intensity were striking. Volume of activation was significantly greater in the left than in the right hemisphere. Intrasubject reproducibility for delta S was higher than for volume of activation. delta S and intelligibility showed a similar dependence on intensity suggesting that not only intensity but also intelligibility affect the fMRI signal.

Adult↗

Structure of human auditory cortex. I. Cytoarchitectonics and dendritic distributions.

In the human primary and secondary auditory cortices the neuron somata are arranged in distinct columnar clusters. Measurements on their diameters and the intervals between them yield significant hemispherical differences, having in all cases greater values in the left hemisphere. Computer-assisted tracings of Golgi-impregnated dendritic trees of 300 neurons show the expected types. An analysis of the columnar structure of the dendritic trees indicates varying degrees of specificity in collecting information from their surroundings. An analysis of their tangential extent shows that in the primary cortices a greater extent in the left hemisphere effectively cancels the differences in columnar widths and intervals, allowing for a similar dendritic connectivity among columns in both hemispheres. In the secondary cortex this connectivity is greater on the right side.

Aged↗

Topography of binaural organization in primary auditory cortex of the cat: effects of changing interaural intensity.

Responses from neuron clusters were used to derive binaural and aural dominance maps within the 5- to 30-kHz frequency representation of the primary auditory cortical (AI) field in the barbiturate-anesthetized cat. Tone burst stimuli were presented dichotically using a calibrated and sealed acoustic delivery system to parametrically vary interaural intensity difference (IID). Neuron cluster responses were divided into three binaural interaction classes using audiovisual criteria: summation (56%), suppression (25%), and mixed (17%). Neurons in the summation and suppression classes demonstrated a single type of binaural interaction, regardless of intensity manipulations. Neurons in the mixed binaural class demonstrated summation responses when dichotic tonal intensities were near their threshold levels and the IID was small, but suppression responses when the IID was increased. The relative proportions of the three binaural interaction classes changed with distance along the dorsal-to-ventral isofrequency dimension. Nearly equal proportions of each class were observed at the ventral end of field AI, whereas quite different proportions of each class were seen at the dorsal extreme of the field. The average frequency of occurrence of the mixed binaural class increased nearly monotonically with increasing distance from the dorsal end of field AI. The majority of mapped AI loci exhibited a contralateral aural dominance (65%) with equidominance (25%), ipsilateral aural dominance (6%), and predominantly binaural (4%) classes accounting for the remainder. Average topographic distributions of aural dominance suggested that the ventral end of field AI consisted almost exclusively of the contralateral dominance class, whereas more equal proportions of the four classes were observed near the dorsal extreme of the field. The highest average proportions of ipsilateral aural dominance and predominantly binaural classes were found in the dorsal half of field AI. Single neurons, isolated at cortical loci assigned to the mixed binaural class during the mapping of neuron clusters, were shown to demonstrate both summation and suppression responses. Quantitative measurements relating either discharge rate or response latency to changes in the IID appeared to distinguish these cells from other single neurons studied. Typically, the probability of discharge was initially increased and subsequently decreased by progressive changes in IID that increased the intensity of the ipsilateral tone relative to the contralateral tone. The initial changes in IID characteristically shortened the latent period to the binaural response while subsequent increments in IID produced a more comp

Acoustic Stimulation↗