Brain meeting: Alex Billig

Brain meeting

Direct recordings from the superior temporal plane of neurosurgical patients allow the functional organisation of human auditory cortex to be probed with high spatiotemporal resolution. We compare activity in primary and non-primary fields on Heschl’s gyrus prior to and during perception of clear and degraded speech. Non-primary cortex is characterised at rest by pronounced alpha (7-10 Hz) activity that is suppressed during auditory stimulation. In contrast, primary auditory cortex shows marked induced power in the high gamma range (70-150 Hz), the time course of which tracks spectro-temporal features of the speech signal. These responses are also sensitive to stimulus intelligibility as manipulated using visual cues. The differing spectral profiles of activity in primary and non-primary auditory fields may provide constraints on models of cortical information processing.

There will be coffee, tea and cake in the conservatory directly after the talk.