Auditory Cortex News and Research

RSS

The auditory cortex is the region of the brain that is responsible for processing of auditory (sound) information. The primary auditory cortex is located in the temporal lobe. There are additional areas of the human cerebral cortex that are involved in processing sound, in the frontal and parietal lobes.

Music to my ears! Researchers reconstruct Pink Floyd song from brain activity

Researchers successfully reconstructed a snippet of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1" using neural recordings from the brains of neurosurgical patients. The study provides insights into the brain regions responsible for music perception and may pave the way for more advanced brain-computer interfaces and therapies for auditory processing disorders.

6 Sep 2023

Experts provide neural evidence for the glimpsing model of speech perception

Researchers led by Dr. Nima Mesgarani at Columbia University, US, report that the brain treats speech in a crowded room differently depending on how easy it is to hear, and whether we are focusing on it. Publishing June 6th in the open access journal PLOS Biology, the study uses a combination of neural recordings and computer modeling to show that when we follow speech that is being drowned out by louder voices, phonetic information is encoded differently than in the opposite situation. The findings could help improve hearing aids that work by isolating attended speech.

7 Jun 2023

Developmental exposure to PCBs blocks hearing recovery from acoustic trauma

Music, mice, and microscopic imaging combine to provide new insight into the effects of environmental chemicals on hearing loss.

5 Jun 2023

Brain’s primary auditory cortex favors positive vocalizations coming from the left side

Researchers have shown that the brain’s primary auditory cortex is more responsive to human vocalizations associated with positive emotions and coming from our left side than to any other kind of sounds.

21 May 2023

Practicing and listening to music could prevent working memory decline

Normal aging is associated with progressive cognitive decline. But can we train our brain to delay this process? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), HES-SO Geneva and EPFL has discovered that practicing and listening to music can alter cognitive decline in healthy seniors by stimulating the production of grey matter.

17 Apr 2023

Speech neuroprostheses can decode speech based on brain activity

Researchers from HSE University and the Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry have developed a machine learning model that can predict the word about to be uttered by a subject based on their neural activity recorded with a small set of minimally invasive electrodes.

19 Jan 2023

Newborn hearing assessment can predict neurophysiological development at 12 months

Portuguese researchers have proven that hearing assessment in early-age infants can help predict milestones and early detection of neurodevelopmental disorder markers.

28 Oct 2022

Scientists identify the mechanism responsible for exceptional auditory abilities in Williams-Beuren syndrome

Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS) is a rare disorder that causes neurocognitive and developmental deficits. However, musical and auditory abilities are preserved or even enhanced in WBS patients.

23 Sep 2022

Somatostatin neurons' properties are specialized in different subregions of the cortex, finds study

The brain's cerebral cortex is made up of distinct regions involved in myriad processes, from sensory perception to cognitive functions like memory, attention, and decision-making. University of Pittsburgh neuroscience researchers have found that the properties of one neuron subtype-;somatostatin neurons-;are specialized in different subregions of the cortex.

6 Sep 2022

MIT scientists discover a population of food-responsive neurons in the ventral visual stream

A gooey slice of pizza. A pile of crispy French fries. Ice cream dripping down a cone on a hot summer day. When you look at any of these foods, a specialized part of your visual cortex lights up, according to a new study from MIT neuroscientists.

25 Aug 2022

Wide variety of sounds can trigger misophonia, study says

Researchers for the first time have identified the parts of the brain involved in a less-commonly studied trigger of misophonia, a condition associated with an extreme aversion to certain sounds.

18 Aug 2022

Ultra-precise method identifies age-related changes in gamma oscillations in children's auditory cortex

Researchers from the HSE Center for Language and Brain have identified previously unknown age-related changes in brain activity during the perception of auditory information in a group of children aged 7–12 years.

1 Aug 2022

Scientists uncover neural mechanisms through which sound blunts pain in mice

An international team of scientists has identified the neural mechanisms through which sound blunts pain in mice.

7 Jul 2022

Stimulation of the auditory cortex improves speech perception over background noise

Stimulating a specific part of the auditory cortex immediately improved speech perception over background noise in an epilepsy patient, according to new research in JNeurosci.

29 Mar 2022

Neuronal subpopulation responds specifically to song

In this interview, News-Medical speaks to Samuel Norman-Haignere about his latest research that discovered a neuronal subpopulation that responds specifically to song.

15 Mar 2022

Study describes how brain pulsation changes during sleep

The University of Oulu Functional Neuroimaging research group has for the first time succeeded in describing how the various types of pulsations in the human brain change when a person sleeps.

24 Feb 2022

Subset of human auditory neurons responds to song

A new study indicates that not only does the human auditory cortex respond selectively to music compared to speech, but it is mediated by neuronal subpopulations that respond specifically to different types of music, including a subset for song.

23 Feb 2022

Dog brains can detect speech and show different activity patterns to many languages

Dog brains can detect speech, and show different activity patterns to a familiar and an unfamiliar language, a new brain imaging study by researchers from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) finds.

6 Jan 2022

Scientists trace neuronal activity when the brain switches from hearing to listening

What happens in the brain when simply hearing becomes listening? To answer this question, researchers at the University of Basel have traced the neuronal fingerprint of the two types of sound processing in the mouse brain.

14 Dec 2021

Similar brain responses to speech sounds found in humans, macaques and guinea pigs

Speech sounds elicit comparable neural responses and stimulate the same region in the brain of humans, macaques and guinea pigs, a multidisciplinary group of University of Pittsburgh researchers reported in the journal eNeuro today.

21 Nov 2021