HUMAN AUDITORY CORTEX PHYSIOLOGY

语音是我们听到的最重要的声音，但我们对这些刺激在人类大脑皮层中的表现知之甚少。 我们的研究目标是了解人类大脑皮层中参与声音处理的那些区域的功能组织和连接，并检查语音声音刺激如何在这些区域内表示。 这些实验涉及直接电生理记录和电刺激清醒的人类受试者的大脑皮层进行临床评价的难治性癫痫。在我们的研究过程中，我们计划：1）确定颞/顶叶/额叶参与声音处理的大脑区域，2）检查它们的功能互连，3）研究语音在这些皮层区域内的表现方式，以及4）研究参与语音-视觉语音刺激的双峰整合的皮层过程。 这些目标将由一个多学科小组使用最先进的研究方法单独或组合来实现，以收集过去无法获得的人体生理和解剖数据的补充集。 我们追求这些目标，相信了解正常听觉系统的基本结构和功能对于理解听力，言语和语言各方面受损的机制至关重要。

Speech sounds are the most important sounds that we hear, yet little is known about how these stimuli are represented within human cerebral cortex. The goal of our research is to understand the functional organizations and connections of those areas of human cerebral cortex that are engaged in sound processing and examine how speech sound stimuli are represented within these regions. These experiments involve direct electrophysiological recording from and electrical stimulation of the cerebral cortex of awake human subjects undergoing clinical evaluation of intractable epilepsy. In the course of our investigations we plan to: 1) identify temporal/parietal/frontal brain regions engaged in sound processing, 2) examine their functional interconnections, 3) study the manner in which speech sounds are represented within these cortical regions, and 4) investigate the cortical processes involved in the bimodal integration of auditory-visual speech stimuli. These objectives will be pursued by a multidisciplinary team using state-of-the-art research methods, alone and in combination, to gather complementary sets of human physiological and anatomical data that could not be obtained in the past. We pursue these objectives believing that knowledge of the fundamental structure and function of the normal auditory system is essential to understanding mechanisms that underly impairment of all aspects of hearing, speech, and language.