Department of Psychology and Program in Cognitive Neuroscience, The City College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, NY, USA.
Cereb Cortex. 2013 Jul;23(7):1724-30. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhs166. Epub 2012 Jun 12.
Hearing and feeling both rely upon the transduction of physical events into frequency-based neural codes, suggesting that the auditory system may be intimately related to the somatosensory system. Here, we provide evidence that the neural substrates for audition and somatosensation are anatomically linked. Using diffusion tensor imaging with both deterministic and probabilistic tractography to measure white matter connectivity, we show that there are extensive ipsilateral connections between the primary auditory cortex and the primary and secondary somatosensory regions in the human cerebral cortex. We further show that these cross-modal connections are exaggerated between the auditory and secondary somatosensory cortex in the lesioned hemisphere of a patient (SR) with acquired auditory-tactile synesthesia, in whom sounds alone produce bodily sensations. These results provide an anatomical basis for multisensory interactions between audition and somatosensation and suggest that cross-talk between these regions may explain why some sounds, such as nails screeching down a chalkboard or an audible mosquito, can induce feelings of touch, especially on the contralesional body surface of patient SR.
听觉和触觉都依赖于将物理事件转化为基于频率的神经编码，这表明听觉系统可能与躯体感觉系统密切相关。在这里，我们提供证据表明听觉和躯体感觉的神经基础在解剖上是相连的。我们使用扩散张量成像结合确定性和概率追踪技术来测量白质连接，结果表明在人类大脑皮层中，初级听觉皮层与初级和次级躯体感觉区域之间存在广泛的同侧连接。我们进一步表明，在患有获得性听觉-触觉联觉的患者（SR）的损伤半球中，这些跨模态连接在听觉和次级躯体感觉皮层之间被夸大，在该患者中，仅声音就会产生身体感觉。这些结果为听觉和躯体感觉之间的多感觉相互作用提供了解剖学基础，并表明这些区域之间的串扰可能解释了为什么有些声音，如指甲在黑板上刮擦或可听见的蚊子声，会引起触觉，特别是在患者 SR 的对侧身体表面。
