Multisensory convergence at human temporo-parietal junction - epicortical recording of evoked responses.
OBJECTIVE
Previous lesion studies in patients and functional imaging studies in normal subjects have led to the notion that the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) has an integrative function for multisensory inputs. However, its electrophysiological properties such as response latencies and distributions of responses to various stimulus modalities in humans have not been fully investigated. The aim of the study is to clarify this issue.


METHODS
We recorded evoked potentials to different kinds of sensory stimuli including somatosensory, auditory and visual modalities in 6 patients with intractable partial epilepsy, who underwent chronic implantation of subdural electrodes in TPJ for presurgical evaluation.


RESULTS
In 5 out of 6 subjects, at least one electrode located in TPJ for each subject showed a maximum somatosensory evoked response commonly to electric, passive joint motion and pain stimuli. These electrodes showed the maximum responses also to tone stimuli in all of 4 subjects studied, and to visual motion stimuli in 3 out of 5 subjects studied. The polarity was consistent regardless of the stimulus modality within each individual subject, although the anatomical location, polarity and latency varied among subjects.


CONCLUSIONS
A small area in TPJ for each individual subject receives sensory information of multiple modalities possibly coming from different receptive sites, although the electrophysiological properties of the responses may vary among subjects.


CONCLUSIONS
We confirmed the convergence of somatosensory, auditory and visual evoked responses at human TPJ.
Matsuhashi
Masao
M
Human Brain Research Center, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Shogoin, Sakyo, Kyoto 606-8507, Japan.
Ikeda
Akio
A
Ohara
Shinji
S
Matsumoto
Riki
R
Yamamoto
Junichi
J
Takayama
Motohiro
M
Satow
Takeshi
T
Begum
Tahamina
T
Usui
Keiko
K
Nagamine
Takashi
T
Mikuni
Nobuhiro
N
Takahashi
Jun
J
Miyamoto
Susumu
S
Fukuyama
Hidenao
H
Shibasaki
Hiroshi
H
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D005073:Evoked Potentials, Somatosensory; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007596:Joints; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009038:Motion; D010146:Pain / Q000503:physiopathology; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012677:Sensation; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*