Functional neuroimaging in the study of the human auditory cortex.
Year: 1997
Type: article
Abstract: Functional neuroimaging has emerged as a major new scientific approach to the study of the central nervous system. The papers by Strainer et al (1) and Richards et al (2) in this issue of AJNR provide two examples of how such methods may be applied to furthering our understanding of functional aspects of the auditory cortex. These studies illustrate well the promise of these techniques for both experimental purposes and clinical applications; one must also be aware, however, of the limitations of such methods in order to interpret imaging findings appropriately. Past studies have demonstrated how positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance (MR) imaging can be used to study the distribution of cerebral hemodynamic changes associated with sensory stimulation in many modalities, including vision (3, 4), somatomotor function (5), olfaction (6), and audition (7–9). These methods have also been increasingly applied to investigate complex cognitive functions, such as speech and language processing (9–13). The tremendous importance of these imaging techniques is that they provide investigators with a tool to study how the pattern of activity in the human brain in vivo changes as a function of perceptual or psychological variables. Neuroscientists interested in behavior and cognition have welcomed these developments as a very significant complement to the more traditional lesion approach to the study of brain-behavior relationships. To date, knowledge about the functional organization of the human auditory cortex has been quite limited. The studies by Richards et al and Strainer et al provide useful new knowledge that would be difficult to obtain with other techniques. The study of Strainer and collaborators (1) illustrates one application of functional MR, and demonstrates the feasibility of measuring
Source: PubMed
Author: R J Zatorre
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2338815784