Left auditory cortex was exposed by craniotomy, leaving the dura intact.
Here, stronger BOLD response to rareKC was found bilaterally in the auditory cortex (BA 21,22) and adjacent areas (masked task-specific clusters: left auditory cortex pcluster = 0.149; right pcluster = 0.019) (Table 3 and Figure 2A).
Since equivalent P50 amplitudes have been reported for professional musicians [3], increased left auditory responses in WS individuals might be pointing to a putative electrophysiological substrate of their particular musicality.
Second, top-down signals are significantly stronger for left auditory cortex than for right auditory cortex.
(Top) Left auditory cortex activity localized by the same contrast used to identify the frontoparietal sensorimotor network [(Plan + Execute) > 2*(Preview)].
We computed correlations separately for each voxel (from Figure 3) and for delta and theta bands for TDI to left auditory cortex (threshold at p < 0.05, corrected).
Left auditory cortical areas have been proposed to have a higher degree of temporal resolution with respect to stimulus processing (Belin et al. 1998; Zatorre 2001) in contrast to right auditory areas, which seem to show greater spectral sensitivity.
Simultaneously, the enhanced coupling of right auditory regions to a task-relevant central hub of the network (left auditory cortex) ensures the propagation of the stimulus presentation to higher order processing regions of the brain.
With the probe AEP, a smaller N1-P2 measurement over either C3 (left auditory area) or C4 (right auditory area) suggests a greater degree of hemispheric involvement in the memory task.
In early total beta activity, there was a significant relationship between Nonword Repetition score and beta power for controls in left auditory cortex (B = −22.92, p =.007) and left FFG (B = −26.98, p =.017), such that higher scores were associated with reduced total beta activity.
Nonparametric cluster-based permutation tests revealed significant differences for the evoked responses in the regions of interest for rather late peaks (see Fig. 2): right (P = 0.02; 230–300 ms) and left auditory cortex (first cluster: P = 0.008, 230 300 ms; second cluster: P = 0.022, 390 470 ms).
