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Science 6 September 2002:
Vol. 297. no. 5587, pp. 1706 - 1708
DOI: 10.1126/science.1074355
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Reports

Spatiotemporal Pattern of Neural Processing in the Human Auditory Cortex

Erich Seifritz,1* Fabrizio Esposito,2 Franciszek Hennel,3 Henrietta Mustovic,1 John G. Neuhoff,4 Deniz Bilecen,5 Gioacchino Tedeschi,2 Klaus Scheffler,6 Francesco Di Salle7

The principles that the auditory cortex uses to decipher a stream of acoustic information have remained elusive. Neural responses in the animal auditory cortex can be broadly classified into transient and sustained activity. We examined the existence of similar principles in the human brain. Sound-evoked, blood oxygen level-dependent signal response was decomposed temporally into independent transient and sustained constituents, which predominated in different portions--core and belt--of the auditory cortex. Converging with unit recordings, our data suggest that this spatiotemporal pattern in the auditory cortex may represent a fundamental principle of analyzing sound information.

1 Department of Psychiatry, University of Basel, 4025 Basel, Switzerland.
2 Second Division of Neurology, Second University of Naples, 80138 Naples, Italy.
3 Magnetic Resonance Department, 44691, Fondation pour la Recherche Appliquée en Psychiatre, Hospital Center, 68250 Rouffach, France.
4 Department of Psychology, The College of Wooster, Wooster, OH 44691, USA.
5 Department of Radiology, University of Basel, 4031 Basel, Switzerland.
6 Section for Medical Physics, Department of Radiology, University of Freiburg, 79106 Freiburg, Germany.
7 Department of Neurological Sciences, Division of Neuroradiology, University of Naples Federico II, 80127 Naples, Italy.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: erich.seifritz{at}unibas.ch

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