HUMAN AUDITORY CORTEX PHYSIOLOGY

语音是我们听到的最重要的声音，但关于这些刺激在人类大脑皮层中是如何表现的，我们知之甚少。我们研究的目标是了解人类大脑皮层中参与声音处理的区域的功能组织和联系，并检查语音声音刺激在这些区域中是如何呈现的。这些实验包括从清醒的人类受试者大脑皮层直接电生理记录和电刺激，这些受试者正在接受顽固性癫痫的临床评估。在我们的研究过程中，我们计划：1)识别参与声音处理的大脑的颞叶/顶叶/额叶区域，2)检查它们的功能相互联系，3)研究语音在这些皮质区域内的表现方式，以及4)研究听觉-视觉语音刺激的双峰整合所涉及的皮质过程。这些目标将由一个多学科团队利用最先进的研究方法单独或结合起来进行，以收集过去无法获得的互补的人体生理和解剖数据集。我们追求这些目标，相信对正常听觉系统的基本结构和功能的了解对于理解导致听力、言语和语言各方面损伤的机制是必不可少的。

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.