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Updated: Aug 26, 2026

Mapping the After-effects of Theta Burst Stimulation on the Human Auditory Cortex with Functional Imaging
Published on: September 12, 2012
Audiovisual integration of letters in the human brain
1Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland. tommi@neuro.hut.fi
Abstract:
Letters of the alphabet have auditory (phonemic) and visual (graphemic) qualities. To investigate the neural representations of such audiovisual objects, we recorded neuromagnetic cortical responses to auditorily, visually, and audiovisually presented single letters. The auditory and visual brain activations first converged around 225 ms after stimulus onset and then interacted predominantly in the right temporo-occipito-parietal junction (280345 ms) and the left (380-540 ms) and right (450-535 ms) superior temporal sulci. These multisensory brain areas, playing a role in audiovisual integration of phonemes and graphemes, participate in the neural network supporting the supramodal concept of a "letter." The dynamics of these functions bring new insight into the interplay between sensory and association cortices during object recognition.
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