From Air Oscillations to Music and Speech: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Evidence for Fine-Tuned Neural Networks in Audition

Abstract

In the auditory modality, music and speech have high informational and emotional value for human beings. However, the degree of the functional specialization of the cortical and subcortical areas in encoding music and speech sounds is not yet known. We investigated the functional specialization of the human auditory system in processing music and speech by functional magnetic resonance imaging recordings. During recordings, the subjects were presented with saxophone sounds and pseudowords /ba:ba/ with comparable acoustical content. Our data show that areas encoding music and speech sounds differ in the temporal and frontal lobes. Moreover, slight variations in sound pitch and duration activated thalamic structures differentially. However, this was the case with speech sounds only while no such effect was evidenced with music sounds. Thus, our data reveal the existence of a functional specialization of the human brain in accurately representing sound information at both cortical and subcortical areas. They indicate that not only the sound category (speech/music) but also the sound parameter (pitch/duration) can be selectively encoded.

Heschl's Gyrus, Posterior Superior Temporal Gyrus, and Mid-Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Have Different Roles in the Detection of Acoustic Changes

“…In earlier brain imaging studies on preattentive auditory deviance detection, activation of the STG has been the most consistent finding (Doeller et al 2003;Liebenthal et al 2003;Mathiak et al 2002;Molholm et al 2005;Muller et al 2002;Opitz et al 1999Opitz et al , 2002Rinne et al 2005;Schall et al 2003;Tervaniemi et al 2000Tervaniemi et al , 2006. The region responsive to deviants in our study encroached the PT, mostly adjacent to STG, STS, and the medial and lateral parts of HG.…”

“…Interestingly, the hemispheric distribution of the responses to duration changes might depend on the nature of the stimulus. In this study, we found no significant systematic differences in the responses from the left and right superior temporal plane, whereas Tervaniemi et al (2006) showed that complex speech-and music-like stimuli might evoke stronger responses in the left and right STG/STS, respectively.…”

“…Two contributions to the change response, one from the temporal lobes and one from the right frontal lobe, were suggested on the basis of the current density distribution of evoked potentials (Giard et al 1990) and reductions of the MMN amplitude in patients with lesions in the frontal and temporal lobes (Alain et al 1998;Alho et al 1994). Since then, a number of neuroimaging studies have tried to locate the generators of these components (Doeller et al 2003;Liebenthal et al 2003;Marco-Pallares et al 2005;Mathiak et al 2002;Molholm et al 2005;Muller et al 2002;Opitz et al 1999;Rinne et al 2005;Schall et al 2003;Tervaniemi et al 2006). Results vary substantially across these experiments.…”

“…A second example is the question of whether the change-detection mechanism is co-localized with primary feature processing (i.e., does the detection of small pitch changes happen in areas that extract pitch). This is a tacit, but unproven, assumption in studies that use the MMN as a tool to locate the processing of acoustic features (Pulvermüller et al 2006;Shestakova et al 2004;Tervaniemi et al 2006).…”

Distinct neural responses to chord violations: A multiple source analysis study

“…Previous studies also obtained a right-hemispheric predominance of the MMN, especially during the detection of nonphonetic auditory stimuli (Brattico et al, 2006;Opitz et al, 2002;Tervaniemi et al, 2000). However, left-lateralization has also been described depending on the non-phonetic feature (Grimm et al, 2006;Tervaniemi et al, 2006b). Furthermore, several studies failed to replicate the right lateralization of the ERAN (Loui et al, 2005;Leino et al, 2007), rather suggesting that this brain response has bilateral generators.…”