OBSERVATION OF NEURAL PROCESSES OF AUDITORY SCENE ANALYSIS BY MAGNETOENCEPHALOGRAPHY

In order to elucidate the auditory mechanism of sensory cue grouping a nd stream formation, we used a 37-channel SQUID magnetic fields elicit ed by spoken sound stimuli consisting of an isolated work, an isolated consonant (/k/) burst, and a concurrent but perceptually segregated v ersion of them. Only the overlapped /k/ burst among the five measured neural activities had a statistically significant difference in the lo cation of the equivalent single-current dipoles in both hemispheres. T he result suggests that the neurons activated by the overlapped /k/ bu rst are at least partially different from those activated by the other sounds; thereby supporting our new hypothesis that concurrent auditor y events are spatially represented with the auditory cortex.