| Abstract No.: | 117 |
| Country: | Canada |
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| Title: | ANATOMICAL AND FUNCTIONAL PLASTICITY IN HUMAN AUDITORY CORTEX |
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| Authors/Affiliations: | 1 Robert Zatorre*;
1 Montreal Neurological Institute, QC, Canada
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| Content: | In this lecture we will consider functional and structural neuroimaging findings dealing with the organization of the human auditory cortex for the processing of complex acoustic signals, such as music and speech, and how this processing changes as a function of different types of experience. We will start by examining the evidence for specialization of auditory cortex for the analysis of pitch, reviewing converging evidence that a region in the right lateral Heschl’s gyrus plays a particularly important role in the representation of pitch. We will then consider how musical training interacts with the organization of this pitch-processing system. Our evidence suggests not only that training has consequences on anatomy and function, as others have also shown, but also that pre-existing differences in the properties of this system may affect behavioral performance on relevant pitch tasks. This theme is also revealed in research done on speech learning, where anatomical features of auditory cortex in the left hemisphere, such as the white matter underlying Heschl’s gyrus, are shown to predict ability to learn speech sounds from a second language. Finally, we will examine the plasticity effects associated with sensory deprivation by studying populations of blind individuals. These persons show particularly striking adaptations to blindness by enhancements of certain auditory processes, which in turn are also reflected in functional and structural changes in visual cortices, and elsewhere in the brain. Together, these findings help us towards our goal of achieving a more complete understanding of the dynamic nature of human auditory cognitive functions and their neural substrates.
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