A cortical region sensitive to auditory spectral motion

The functional architecture of human auditory cortex is still poorly unders tood compared with that of visual cortex, yet anatomical and electrophysiol ogical studies in non-human primates suggest that the auditory cortex also might be functionally specialized. in a model of parallel and hierarchical organization. In particular, spectral changes such as the formant transitio ns of speech, or spectral motion (SM) by analogy with visual motion, could be processed in specialized cortical regions. In this study, positron emiss ion tomography (PEI) was used to identify which auditory cortical region ar e involved in SM analysis. We found that a bilateral secondary auditory cor tical region, located in the caudal-lateral belt of auditory cortex, was mo re sensitive to auditory stimuli containing spectral changes than to matche d stimuli with a stationary spectral profile. This result suggests that ana logies between sensory systems could prove useful in the research into the functional organization of the auditory cortex. NeuroReport 11:2969-2972 (C ) 2000 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.