The nature of spatial representation in human auditory cortex remains elusive. In particular, although humans can discriminate the locations of sounds as close as 1-10 degrees apart, such resolution has not been shown in auditory cortex of humans or animals. We used the mismatch negativity (MMN) event related brain potential to measure the neural response to spatial change in humans in narrow 10 degree spatial steps. Twelve participants were tested using a dense array EEG setup while watching a silent movie and ignoring the sounds. The MMN was reliably elicited by infrequent changes of spatial location of sounds in free field. The MMN amplitude was linearly related to the degree of spatial change with a resolution of at least 10 degrees. These electrophysiological responses occurred within a window of 100-200 milliseconds from stimulus onset, and were localized to the posterior superior temporal gyrus. We conclude that azimuthal spatial displacement is rapidly, accurately and automatically represented in auditory sensory memory in humans, at the level of the auditory cortex.

We examined the effects of aging on visuo-spatial attention. Participants performed a bi-field visual selective attention task consisting of infrequent target and task-irrelevant novel stimuli randomly embedded among repeated standards in either attended or unattended visual fields. Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) responses to the different classes of stimuli were measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The older group had slower reaction times to targets, and committed more false alarms but had comparable detection accuracy to young controls. Attended target and novel stimuli activated comparable widely distributed attention networks, including anterior and posterior association cortex, in both groups. The older group had reduced spatial extent of activation in several regions, including prefrontal, basal ganglia, and visual processing areas. In particular, the anterior cingulate and superior frontal gyrus showed more restricted activation in older compared with young adults across all attentional conditions and stimulus categories. The spatial extent of activations correlated with task performance in both age groups, but the regional pattern of association between hemodynamic responses and behavior differed between the groups. Whereas the young subjects relied on posterior regions, the older subjects engaged frontal areas. The results indicate that aging alters the functioning of neural networks subserving visual attention, and that these changes are related to cognitive performance.

How and where object and spatial information are perceptually integrated in the brain is a central question in visual cognition. Single-unit physiology, scalp EEG, and fMRI research suggests that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is a critical locus for object-spatial integration. To test the causal participation of the PFC in an object-spatial integration network, we studied ten patients with unilateral PFC damage performing a lateralized object-spatial integration task. Consistent with single-unit and neuroimaging studies, we found that PFC lesions result in a significant behavioral impairment in object-spatial integration. Furthermore, by manipulating inter-hemispheric transfer of object-spatial information, we found that masking of visual transfer impairs performance in the contralesional visual field in the PFC patients. Our results provide the first evidence that the PFC plays a key, causal role in an object-spatial integration network. Patient performance is also discussed within the context of compensation by the non-lesioned PFC.

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