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Task-modulated "what" and "where" pathways in human auditory cortex.

Jyrki Ahveninen¹, Iiro P Jääskeläinen, Tommi Raij

¹Harvard Medical School-Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, CNY 149 13th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA. jyrki@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

|September 20, 2006

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The human brain processes sound location and identity through parallel "where" and "what" pathways in the auditory cortex. Selective attention enhances these pathways based on specific sound features.

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Auditory Perception
Cognitive Neuroscience

Background:

Human neuroimaging suggests distinct parietal-to-prefrontal "where" and temporal-to-frontal "what" pathways for auditory processing.
Animal models indicate these dual pathways may exist in the nonprimary auditory cortex.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the existence of parallel "what" and "where" pathways in the human nonprimary auditory cortex.
To determine if selective attention modulates these pathways in a feature-specific manner for sound localization and identification.

Main Methods:

Combined hemodynamic (functional MRI) and electromagnetic (magnetoencephalography) measurements.
Analysis of response adaptation to phonetic vs. spatial sound changes.
Examination of neural activity approximately 70-150 ms post-stimulus onset.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

Demonstrated a double dissociation, confirming parallel anterior "what" and posterior "where" pathways in the nonprimary auditory cortex.
The "where" pathway activated ~30 ms earlier than the "what" pathway.
Selective attention to phonetic content modulated the "what" pathway, while attention to location modulated the "where" pathway.

Conclusions:

The human nonprimary auditory cortex processes sound identity and location via parallel "what" and "where" pathways.
These pathways are modulated in a feature-specific manner by selective attention.
Early activation of the "where" pathway may support auditory object perception using top-down spatial information.