File:Tonotopic maps in human auditory cortex.jpg

English: Tonotopic maps in auditory cortex. A, Sound stimuli were pure tone bursts presented in cycled progressions from low frequencies to high: 88 to 8000 Hz in half-octave steps. Each 28 s progression from low to high (red-to-blue color scale) was followed by a 4 s stimulus pause. Sound stimuli were designed to induce a traveling wave of response across cortical tonotopic maps: fMRI responses peak sooner in map regions preferring low frequencies and progressively later in regions preferring higher frequencies. Linear cross-correlation analysis was used to determine the temporal delay that best fit the observed fMRI response time course of each voxel and to assign a corresponding best frequency. B, Analyses were performed in each individual subject's (n = 10) volumetric space. C, Resulting color-coded frequency maps were projected onto each subject's cortical surface meshes. Surfaces were minimally inflated to expose the auditory cortex on the temporal plane. D, In 20/20 hemispheres, two primary mirror-symmetric tonotopic maps (high-to-low-low-to-high) were observed, and three sample right hemispheres are shown with a voxelwise threshold of p < 0.05 (FDR corrected). The posterior (high-to-low) and anterior (low-to-high) maps contain the regions hA1 and hR, respectively, and the low-frequency union between the two maps is the hA1–R border. Dotted lines indicate how surface patches containing the two maps were defined for the next step of analysis. E, Group averaged tonotopic maps across all 10 subjects after cortex-based alignment indicates the consistency of tonotopic map location relative to HG. Correlation threshold R > 0.15. hA1 refer to human A1 part of primary auditory cortex, and hR refer to human R part of primary auditory cortex. Source: Da Costa, S., van der Zwaag, W., Marques, J. P., Frackowiak, R. S., Clarke, S., & Saenz, M. (2011). Human primary auditory cortex follows the shape of Heschl's gyrus. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(40), 14067-14075.