Magnetic auditory evoked fields: Interhemispheric asymmetry

doi:10.1016/0013-4694(81)90102-4

Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology

Volume 51, Issue 4, April 1981, Pages 388-392

https://doi.org/10.1016/0013-4694(81)90102-4 Get rights and content

Abstract

Magnetic auditory evoked fields (MAEFs) were recorded from the right (11 subjects) and the left (7 subjects) hemisphere following 128 click stimuli delivered to contralateral, ipsilateral and both (bilateral) ears. Right hemisphere MAEFs were of higher amplitude following contralateral, compared to ipsilateral, stimulation in 9 of 11 subjects; mean contralateral response amplitude was 135 ± 33% (S.D.) of ipsilateral response amplitude. Left hemisphere MAEFs were of higher amplitude following contralateral stimulation in 7 of 7 subjects; mean contralateral response amplitude was 145 ± 44% of ipsilateral response amplitude.

These observations are compatible with evidence that a majority of centripetal auditory input is crossed, and/or that contralateral auditory stimulation activates a larger area of cortex than does ipsilateral stimulation.

Résumé

Les champs auditifs magnétiques évoqués: asyétrie ont été enregistrés sur l'hémisphère droit (11 sujets) et gauche (7 sujets) pour 128 clics sonores délivrés à l'oreille contralatérale, à l'oreille ipsilatérale et aux 2 oreilles. Chez 9 des 11 sujets les champs de l'hémisphère droit ont eu une amplitude supérieure, pour la stimulation contralatérale, a celle obtenue pour la stimulation ipsilatérale; l'amplitude moyenne de la réponse contralatérale était 135 ± 33% (ES) de celle de la réponse ipsilatérale. Les champs de l'hémisphère gauche ont eu, chez 7 sujets sur 7, une amplitude supérieure lors de la stimulation contralatérale; l'amplitude moyenne de la réponse contralatérale était 145 ± 44% de celle de la réponse ipsilatérale.

Ces observations sont compatibles avec le fait qu'une majorité d'afférents auditifs centripètes est croisée, et/ou que la stimulation auditive contralatérale active une zone plus grande de cortex que ne la fait la stimulation ipsilatérale.

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Auditory-evoked responses can be affected by different types of contralateral sounds or by attention modulation. The present study examined the additive effects of presenting visual information about contralateral sounds as distractions during dichotic listening tasks on the contralateral effects of N100m responses in the auditory-evoked cortex in 16 subjects (12 males and 4 females). In magnetoencephalography, a tone-burst of 500 ms duration at a frequency of 1000 Hz was played to the left ear at a level of 70 dB as a stimulus to elicit the N100m response, and a movie clip was used as a distractor stimulus under audio-only, visual-only, and audio-visual conditions.
Subjects were instructed to pay attention to the left ear and press the response button each time they heard a tone-burst stimulus in their left ear. The results suggest that the presentation of visual information related to the contralateral sound, which worked as a distractor, significantly suppressed the amplitude of the N100m response compared with only the contralateral sound condition. In contrast, the presentation of visual information related to contralateral sound did not affect the latency of the N100m response. These results suggest that the integration of contralateral sounds and related movies may have resulted in a more perceptually loaded stimulus and reduced the intensity of attention to tone-bursts. Our findings suggest that selective attention and saliency mechanisms may have cross-modal effects on other modes of perception.
Lateralization of brain responses to auditory motion: A study using single-trial analysis
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The present study investigates hemispheric asymmetry of the ERPs and low-frequency oscillatory responses evoked in both hemispheres of the brain by the sound stimuli with delayed onset of motion. EEG was recorded for three patterns of sound motion produced by changes in interaural time differences. Event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) and inter-trial phase coherence (ITC) were computed from the time-frequency decomposition of EEG signals. The participants either read books of their choice (passive listening) or indicated the sound trajectories perceived using a graphic tablet (active listening). Our goal was to find out whether the lateralization of the motion-onset response (MOR) and oscillatory responses to sound motion were more consistent with the right-hemispheric dominance, contralateral or neglect model of interhemispheric asymmetry.
Apparent dominance of the right hemisphere was found only in the ERSP responses. Stronger contralaterality of the left hemisphere corresponding to the “neglect model” of asymmetry was shown by the MOR components and by the phase coherence of the delta-alpha oscillations. Velocity and attention did not change consistently the interhemispheric asymmetry of both the MOR and the oscillatory responses. Our findings demonstrate how the lateralization pattern shown by the MOR potential was interrelated with that of the motion-related single-trial measures.
Visual representations of time elicit early responses in human temporal cortex
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Moreover, our ERP component involves a time window (i.e. 50-90 ms) similar to that characterizing the first subcomponent of the auditory-evoked N1 (i.e. N1a peaking at 70 ms) and also presents a similar spatial selectivity in auditory scalp sites (i.e. contralateral to the spatial position of the stimulus). In fact, the auditory-evoked N1a exhibits greater amplitude in auditory cortex contralateral to the ear receiving the stimulation (Naatanen and Picton, 1987; Pantev et al., 1986; Reite et al., 1981). Unfortunately, even with the best possible EEG source localization technique, it is hard to provide the exact location of the cortical areas which generate our early component in fronto-central and temporal scalp areas.
Time perception is inherently part of human life. All human sensory modalities are always involved in the complex task of creating a temporal representation of the external world. However, when representing time, people primarily rely on auditory information. Since the auditory system prevails in many audio-visual temporal tasks, one may expect that the early recruitment of the auditory network is necessary for building a highly resolved and flexible temporal representation in the visual modality. To test this hypothesis, we asked 17 healthy participants to temporally bisect three consecutive flashes while we recorded EEG. We demonstrated that visual stimuli during temporal bisection elicit an early (50–90 ms) response of an extended area of the temporal cortex, likely including auditory cortex too. The same activation did not appear during an easier spatial bisection task. These findings suggest that the brain may use auditory representations to deal with complex temporal representation in the visual system.
Central auditory processing in adults with chronic stroke without hearing loss: A magnetoencephalography study
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This asymmetry is associated with left-dominance of language processing, right-handedness, and sex (Shapleske et al., 1999; Sommer et al., 2001). Many reports exist about the reduced or reversed asymmetry of the AER source location for clinical populations such as schizophrenia (Heim et al., 2004; Reite et al., 1981; Rockstroh et al., 2001; Tiihonen et al., 1998), bipolar disorder (Reite et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2013), dyslexia (Heim et al., 2003; Heim et al., 2004; Paul et al., 2006), and autism (Schmidt et al., 2009). The diminished source asymmetry in schizophrenia was related to altered connections of interhemispheric callosal white matter (Chance et al., 2008).
Stroke lesions in non-auditory areas may affect higher-order central auditory processing. We sought to characterize auditory functions in chronic stroke survivors with unilateral arm/hand impairment using auditory evoked responses (AERs) with lesion and perception metrics.
The AERs in 29 stroke survivors and 14 controls were recorded with single tones, active and passive frequency-oddballs, and a dual-oddball with pitch-contour and time-interval deviants. Performance in speech-in-noise, mistuning detection, and moving-sound detection was assessed. Relationships between AERs, behaviour, and lesion overlap with functional networks, were examined.
Despite their normal hearing, eight patients showed unilateral AER in the hemisphere ipsilateral to the affected hand with reduced amplitude compared to those with bilateral AERs. Both groups showed increasing attenuation of later components. Hemispheric asymmetry of AER sources was reduced in bilateral-AER patients. The N1 wave (100 ms latency) and P2 (200 ms) were delayed in individuals with lesions in the basal-ganglia and white-matter, while lesions in the attention network reduced the frequency-MMN (mismatch negativity) responses and increased the pitch-contour P3a response. Patients’ impaired speech-in-noise perception was explained by AER measures and frequency-deviant detection performance with multiple regression.
AERs reflect disruption of auditory functions due to damage outside of temporal lobe, and further explain complexity of neural mechanisms underlying higher-order auditory perception.
Stroke survivors without obvious hearing problems may benefit from rehabilitation for central auditory processing.
Changes of the directional brain networks related with brain plasticity in patients with long-term unilateral sensorineural hearing loss
2016, Neuroscience
Citation Excerpt :
Similar result was also obtained in the study using fMRI and magnetoencephalography (Woldorff et al., 1999). Lateralization of cortical responses in normally hearing individuals has also been demonstrated by studies based on positron emission tomography (Hirano et al., 1997) and magnetic auditory-evoked fields (Reite et al., 1981). However, individuals with unilateral sensorineural hearing loss (USNHL) presented less lateralization of cortical activation to monaural stimuli as compared with normally hearing individuals (Scheffler et al., 1998; Bilecen et al., 2000; Tschopp et al., 2000; Langers et al., 2005).
Previous studies often report that early auditory deprivation or congenital deafness contributes to cross-modal reorganization in the auditory-deprived cortex, and this cross-modal reorganization limits clinical benefit from cochlear prosthetics. However, there are inconsistencies among study results on cortical reorganization in those subjects with long-term unilateral sensorineural hearing loss (USNHL). It is also unclear whether there exists a similar cross-modal plasticity of the auditory cortex for acquired monaural deafness and early or congenital deafness. To address this issue, we constructed the directional brain functional networks based on entropy connectivity of resting-state functional MRI and researched changes of the networks. Thirty-four long-term USNHL individuals and seventeen normally hearing individuals participated in the test, and all USNHL patients had acquired deafness. We found that certain brain regions of the sensorimotor and visual networks presented enhanced synchronous output entropy connectivity with the left primary auditory cortex in the left long-term USNHL individuals as compared with normally hearing individuals. Especially, the left USNHL showed more significant changes of entropy connectivity than the right USNHL. No significant plastic changes were observed in the right USNHL. Our results indicate that the left primary auditory cortex (non-auditory-deprived cortex) in patients with left USNHL has been reorganized by visual and sensorimotor modalities through cross-modal plasticity. Furthermore, the cross-modal reorganization also alters the directional brain functional networks. The auditory deprivation from the left or right side generates different influences on the human brain.
Auditory evoked magnetic fields in patients with absent brainstem responses due to auditory neuropathy with optic atrophy
2012, Clinical Neurophysiology
Citation Excerpt :
N100m responses were recorded in all cases, but the latencies were severely prolonged and the amplitudes were considerably decreased compared to the normal range of N100m responses in our facilities. However, despite the abnormal responses, the latencies of N100m were shorter for the contralateral than the ipsilateral stimuli as usually observed in normal subjects (Elberling et al., 1981, 1982; Reite et al., 1981; Pantev et al., 1986; Mäkelä et al., 1994; Nakasato et al., 1995). N100m responses observed in the contralateral hemispheres to the stimuli are shown as stacked waveforms in Fig. 3, in addition to the isofield patterns over the entire head and the estimated ECDs at the peak latency in the contralateral hemisphere, which are superimposed onto the individual horizontal and coronal MR images.
To examine whether auditory evoked fields (AEFs) can be used to objectively evaluate hearing in patients with absent auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) due to auditory neuropathy.
Subjects were 3 patients with auditory neuropathy, 1 male aged 29 years and 2 females aged 18 and 27 years, with absence of click evoked ABRs for bilateral ear stimuli at a level of 105 dB nHL. All patients also had optic atrophy. AEFs were measured with a helmet-shaped magnetoencephalography system for 2.0 kHz tone bursts of 60 ms duration to the unilateral ear.
Bihemispherical AEF responses were clearly recorded in all three patients for either left or right ear stimulus. Although the latencies of N100m were severely prolonged and amplitudes were considerably decreased compared to the normal range of N100m responses in our facilities, N100m latency of AEF was shorter in the contralateral hemisphere to the stimulated ear, as usually found in normal subjects, despite the abnormal delay in N100m latency in all conditions.
Presence and abnormality of auditory cortical responses can be evaluated by AEFs in patients with auditory neuropathy even under null responses in ABRs.
AEFs are useful to evaluate residual hearing in patients with auditory neuropathy.

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^☆: Supported by Office of Naval Research, Contract No. N-00014-79-C-0383, and in part by the EEG Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado Medical Center. Presented at the 1980 Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

²: Supported by NIHM Research Scientist Development Award, Type II, No. 5K02 MH 46335.

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Magnetic auditory evoked fields: Interhemispheric asymmetryChamps auditifs magnétiques évoqués: asymétrie interhémisphérique☆

Abstract

Résumé

Electroenceph. clin. Neurophysiol.

Brain Res.

Neuropsychologia

Electroenceph. clin. Neurophysiol.

Electroenceph. clin. Neurophysiol.

Electroenceph. clin. Neurophysiol.

Electroenceph. clin. Neurophysiol.

Electroenceph. clin. Neurophysiol.

Somatically evoked magnetic fields of the human brain

Science