Gaab Nadine, Gaser Christian, Zaehle Tino, Jancke Lutz, Schlaug Gottfried
Department of Neurology, Music and Neuroimaging Laboratory, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, 330 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
Neuroimage. 2003 Aug;19(4):1417-26. doi: 10.1016/s1053-8119(03)00224-6.
Auditory functional magnetic resonance imaging tasks are challenging since the MR scanner noise can interfere with the auditory stimulation. To avoid this interference a sparse temporal sampling method with a long repetition time (TR = 17 s) was used to explore the functional anatomy of pitch memory. Eighteen right-handed subjects listened to a sequence of sine-wave tones (4.6 s total duration) and were asked to make a decision (depending on a visual prompt) whether the last or second to last tone was the same or different as the first tone. An alternating button press condition served as a control. Sets of 24 axial slices were acquired with a variable delay time (between 0 and 6 s) between the end of the auditory stimulation and the MR acquisition. Individual imaging time points were combined into three clusters (0-2, 3-4, and 5-6 s after the end of the auditory stimulation) for the analysis. The analysis showed a dynamic activation pattern over time which involved the superior temporal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, posterior dorsolateral frontal regions, superior parietal regions, and dorsolateral cerebellar regions bilaterally as well as the left inferior frontal gyrus. By regressing the performance score in the pitch memory task with task-related MR signal changes, the supramarginal gyrus (left>right) and the dorsolateral cerebellum (lobules V and VI, left>right) were significantly correlated with good task performance. The SMG and the dorsolateral cerebellum may play a critical role in short-term storage of pitch information and the continuous pitch discrimination necessary for performing this pitch memory task.
听觉功能磁共振成像任务具有挑战性，因为磁共振扫描仪的噪声会干扰听觉刺激。为避免这种干扰，采用了具有长重复时间（TR = 17秒）的稀疏时间采样方法来探索音高记忆的功能解剖结构。18名右利手受试者聆听了一系列正弦波音调（总时长4.6秒），并被要求根据视觉提示判断最后一个或倒数第二个音调与第一个音调是否相同。交替按键条件作为对照。在听觉刺激结束与磁共振采集之间以可变延迟时间（0至6秒之间）获取24组轴向切片。将各个成像时间点合并为三个簇（听觉刺激结束后0 - 2秒、3 - 4秒和5 - 6秒）进行分析。分析显示随时间变化的动态激活模式，涉及双侧颞上回、缘上回、背外侧额叶后部区域、顶上叶区域和背外侧小脑区域以及左侧额下回。通过将音高记忆任务中的表现分数与任务相关的磁共振信号变化进行回归分析，缘上回（左侧>右侧）和背外侧小脑（V和VI小叶，左侧>右侧）与良好的任务表现显著相关。缘上回和背外侧小脑可能在音高信息的短期存储以及执行此音高记忆任务所需的持续音高辨别中起关键作用。
