title: Hemispheric lateralization of cerebral blood-flow changes during selective listening to dichotically presented continuous speech.
abstract: Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was measured with positron emission tomography (PET) while subjects were selectively listening to continuous speech delivered to one ear and ignoring concurrent speech delivered to the opposite ear, as well as concurrent text or letter strings running on a screen. rCBF patterns associated with selective listening either to the left-ear or right-ear speech message were compared with each other and with rCBF patterns in two visual-attention conditions in which the subjects ignored both speech messages and either read the text or discriminated the meaningless letter strings moving on the screen. Attention to either speech message was associated with enhanced activity in the superior temporal cortex of the language-dominant left hemisphere, as well as in the superior and middle temporal cortex of the right hemisphere suggesting enhanced processing of prosodic features in the attended speech. Moreover, enhanced activity during attention to either speech message was observed in the right parietal areas known to have an important role in directing spatial attention. Evidence was also found for attentional tuning of the left and right auditory cortices to select information from the contralateral auditory hemispace.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. kimmo.alho@helsinki.fi
authors.forename: Kimmo
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Alho
authors.forename: Victor A
authors.initials: VA
authors.lastname: Vorobyev
authors.forename: Svyatoslav V
authors.initials: SV
authors.lastname: Medvedev
authors.forename: Sergey V
authors.initials: SV
authors.lastname: Pakhomov
authors.forename: Marina S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Roudas
authors.forename: Mari
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tervaniemi
authors.forename: Titia
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: van Zuijen
authors.forename: Risto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Näätänen
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001921:Brain / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation / Q000502:physiology*; D004007:Dichotic Listening Tests / Q000379:methods*; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed / Q000379:methods