Human brain areas involved in the analysis of auditory movement

Abstract

This work tests the hypothesis that a network of areas involving bilateral premotor cortex and right parietal cortex subserves the analysis of sound movement. The components of this network have been examined at the level of individual subjects in a study where 720 fMRI scans were acquired per subject. Additionally, the effect of movement direction was investigated by varying this property systematically. Linear sound ramps that are perceived as movement toward one side of the head or the other were used in an experiment in which the principal contrast was between movement, and a stationary control stimulus made up of identical component interaural phase and amplitude cues. In a group analysis, the network of bifrontal and right parietal areas suggested by previous work was confirmed. The frontal activation included both dorsal premotor activity in the region of the frontal eye fields and discrete ventral premotor activation in an area corresponding to primate areas for multimodal spatial analysis and motor planning. The right parietal activation included both superior and inferior parietal cortex. Analysis of the individual data showed a similar pattern of activation in each subject, with the greatest variability within the right parietal area. The pattern of activation did not vary when the direction of movement was varied, suggesting that both directions of movement are represented in the network we have demonstrated.

“What” Becoming “Where”: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Evidence for Pragmatic Relevance Driving Premotor Cortex

“…Although the dorsal PM has therefore often been related to sequential complexity in general, this interpretation is rendered implausible by the finding that increasing sequential complexity in nonspatial sequences, such as size-based and pitch sequences, particularly engages ventral premotor areas (Schubotz and von Cramon, 2002a,b). Moreover, dorsal PM engagement in spatial processing has been reported more generally in nonsequential paradigms in humans (Griffiths et al, 2000;Nobre et al, 2000;Lamm et al, 2001;Pochon et al, 2001;Vingerhoets et al, 2002;Handy et al, 2003). This is in line with a contribution of nonhuman primate dorsal PM to spatial tasks in general, not only sequential ones (Kubota and Hamada, 1978;Passingham, 1987;Boussaoud and Wise, 1993;Shen and Alexander, 1997;Boussaoud, 2001;Lebedev and Wise, 2001).…”

What and Where in human audition: selective deficits following focal hemispheric lesions

“…Given the extent of the lesion, it is not possible to determine precisely which parts of it were responsible for the deficit. However, activation data emphasize the involvement of an extensive cortical network dedicated to auditory spatial processing (Griffiths et al 2000), and the lesions of our other patients with selective localization impairment also involved temporal as well as more dorsal parietal and frontal regions. The association of temporal, parietal and frontal lesions might be necessary to result in a deficit of auditory localization.…”

“…Some authors suggested a dominance of the right hemisphere (Griffiths and Green 1999;Weeks et al 1999;Griffiths et al 2000), whereas others found no evidence for lateralization in auditory spatial processing Woldorff et al 1999). Focal hemispheric lesions were shown to impair the ability to localize sound sources.…”

“…In functional studies, sound localization was shown to activate largely distributed cortical networks with an important contribution of the temporal, parietal and prefrontal cortices (Griffiths et al 1998(Griffiths et al , 2000Bushara et al 1999;Maeder et al 2001). Some authors suggested a dominance of the right hemisphere (Griffiths and Green 1999;Weeks et al 1999;Griffiths et al 2000), whereas others found no evidence for lateralization in auditory spatial processing Woldorff et al 1999).…”

Some investigations into non-passive listening

“…Hart et al (2004) reported that detection of motion produced stronger activation in the medial part of planum temporale while detection of frequency modulation produced stronger activation in the lateral part of planum temporale as well as an additional non-primary area lateral to Heschl's gyrus. Activation of the parietal cortex (already implicated in several studies to be involved in the perception of auditory motion: see Griffiths and Green, 1999;Griffiths et al, 2000;Griffiths et al, 1998) was dependent on the task of motion detection, not simply on the presence of the acoustic cue for motion. These data suggest that the parietal cortex is part of a spatial attention network rather than an area specialised for processing the cues for auditory motion.…”