Novel insights into auditory cortex function using bilateral simultaneous transcranial imaging

双耳听觉与单耳听觉不同，能够在环境噪声条件下识别声音的位置，提高听觉能力。直到最近，在听觉皮层的研究中，由于技术上的挑战，很难将声音分别呈现给每只耳朵，也很难进行区分左右听觉皮层的研究。我们改进了我们一直使用的荧光显微镜，我们同时记录了双侧听觉皮层的反应。此外，我们还开发了一种能够分别刺激每只耳朵的装置。虽然传统的想法是听觉皮层对侧的刺激处理的反应，我们实际上发现，大部分的处理也发生在同侧。我们还发现，双侧刺激引起的反应与单侧刺激不同。

Binaural hearing, unlike unilateral hearing, enables the recognition of the sound location, and the improvement of hearing ability under conditions of ambient noise. Until recently, in research on the auditory cortex, technical challenges had made it difficult to present sounds to each ear separately and conduct studies differentiating left and right auditory cortices. We have improved the fluorescence microscope that we have been using, and we have recorded the responses of the bilateral auditory cortex simultaneously. Furthermore, we have developed a device capable of stimulating each ear separately. Although the conventional thinking is that the auditory cortex contralateral to the stimulus processes the response, we in fact found that much of the processing also occurs ipsilaterally. We also found that bilateral stimulation evokes a different response from that of unilateral stimulation.