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Representation of interaural time delay in the human auditory midbrain

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Abstract

Interaural time difference (ITD) is a critical cue to sound-source localization. Traditional models assume that sounds leading at one ear, and perceived on that side, are processed in the opposite midbrain. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging we demonstrate that as the ITDs of sounds increase, midbrain activity can switch sides, even though perceived location remains on the same side. The data require a new model for human ITD processing.

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Figure 1: Cross-correlogram as a model of neural ITD representation.
Figure 2: Representation of ITD in the inferior colliculus.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Medical Research Council Programme Grant (S.K.T., A.D.-P., T.M. and D.M.), the Volkswagen foundation (K.v.K.) and the Wellcome Trust (T.D.G.).

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Author notes

  1. Sarah K Thompson and Katharina von Kriegstein: These two authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physiology and UCL Ear Institute, University College London, 332 Gray's Inn Road, London, WC1X 8EE, UK

    Sarah K Thompson, Adenike Deane-Pratt, Torsten Marquardt & David McAlpine

  2. Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3BG, UK

    Katharina von Kriegstein, Ralf Deichmann & Timothy D Griffiths

  3. Auditory Group, Medical School, 1 Framlington Place, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE2 4HH, UK

    Katharina von Kriegstein & Timothy D Griffiths

Authors
  1. Sarah K Thompson
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  2. Katharina von Kriegstein
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  3. Adenike Deane-Pratt
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  4. Torsten Marquardt
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  5. Ralf Deichmann
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  6. Timothy D Griffiths
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  7. David McAlpine
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Contributions

K.v.K. contributed to brain imaging, data analysis and development and editing of the manuscript. S.K.T. contributed to brain imaging, data analysis and stimulus construction. A.D.-P. contributed to stimulus design and construction, and to initial brain imaging experiments. R.D. developed the fMRI sequence optimized for imaging the inferior colliculus. T.M. contributed to the development of the experimental hypothesis, stimulus design and development of the π-limit model. T.D.G. contributed to data analysis and to development and editing of the manuscript. D.M. contributed to the development of the experimental hypothesis, stimulus design, development of the π-limit model and development and editing of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David McAlpine.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Fig. 1

Functional mapping of the IC for the 14 individual subjects separately. (PDF 95 kb)

Supplementary Methods (PDF 115 kb)

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Thompson, S., von Kriegstein, K., Deane-Pratt, A. et al. Representation of interaural time delay in the human auditory midbrain. Nat Neurosci 9, 1096–1098 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1755

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1755

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