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Distinct cortical pathways for processing tool versus animal sounds.

James W Lewis1, Julie A Brefczynski, Raymond E Phinney

  • 1Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia 26506, USA. jlewis@hsc.wvu.edu

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
|May 27, 2005
PubMed
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The human brain processes animal sounds in the middle superior temporal gyri, similar to speech. Tool sounds activate a motor-related "mirror network," suggesting sound recognition involves understanding actions.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Auditory Perception
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

Background:

  • Human auditory system can categorize environmental sounds.
  • Visual cortex shows specialized regions for object categories.
  • Auditory system's organization for non-speech sound categories is largely unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

  • Investigate if the auditory system has specialized regions for different sound categories (animal vocalizations vs. tool sounds).
  • Determine the neural basis for sound recognition and categorization.
  • Explore the relationship between sound perception and motor action representation.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to scan human participants.
  • Participants listened to and categorized animal vocalizations and hand-manipulated tool sounds.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Brain activity was analyzed for preferential activation patterns related to sound category and accuracy.

    • Main Results:

    • Animal vocalizations preferentially activated middle portions of the superior temporal gyri (mSTG) in both hemispheres.
    • Tool sounds (correctly or incorrectly categorized) preferentially activated a left-hemisphere dominant cortical "mirror network."
    • This mirror network overlapped with motor cortices involved in pantomimed tool manipulation.

    Conclusions:

    • The auditory system exhibits category-specific organization, with mSTG involved in processing vocalizations.
    • Sound recognition, particularly for tool sounds, engages a high-level auditory "how" pathway linking sound to motor actions.
    • This suggests a causal reasoning mechanism in auditory processing that associates sounds with their likely production actions.