title: Spatiotemporal properties of the BOLD response in the songbirds' auditory circuit during a variety of listening tasks.
abstract: Auditory fMRI in humans has recently received increasing attention from cognitive neuroscientists as a tool to understand mental processing of learned acoustic sequences and analyzing speech recognition and development of musical skills. The present study introduces this tool in a well-documented animal model for vocal learning, the songbird, and provides fundamental insight in the main technical issues associated with auditory fMRI in these songbirds. Stimulation protocols with various listening tasks lead to appropriate activation of successive relays in the songbirds' auditory pathway. The elicited BOLD response is also region and stimulus specific, and its temporal aspects provide accurate measures of the changes in brain physiology induced by the acoustic stimuli. Extensive repetition of an identical stimulus does not lead to habituation of the response in the primary or secondary telencephalic auditory regions of anesthetized subjects. The BOLD signal intensity changes during a stimulation and subsequent rest period have a very specific time course which shows a remarkable resemblance to auditory evoked BOLD responses commonly observed in human subjects. This observation indicates that auditory fMRI in the songbird may establish a link between auditory related neuro-imaging studies done in humans and the large body of neuro-ethological research on song learning and neuro-plasticity performed in songbirds.
authors.affiliation: Bio-Imaging Laboratory, University of Antwerp, Groenenborgerlaan 171, B-2020 Antwerp, Belgium. vincent.vanmeir@ua.ac.be
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Van Meir
authors.forename: Tiny
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Boumans
authors.forename: Geert
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: De Groof
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Van Audekerke
authors.forename: Alain
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Smolders
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Scheunders
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sijbers
authors.forename: Marleen
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Verhoye
authors.forename: Jacques
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Balthazart
authors.forename: Annemie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Van der Linden
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000818:Animals; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D004594:Electrophysiology; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood*; D020308:Songbirds / Q000502:physiology*; D013687:Telencephalon / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology; D013788:Thalamus / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen