Neural Substrates of the Auditory Motion Aftereffect: A Functional MRI Study

The aim of this study was to identify cortical areas, which are responsible to perception of sound source approaching or withdrawing. Models of moving sound sources were presented to 7 healthy subjects while activity of their brain was traced by fMRI. It was found that during long-term 45 s sound stimulation additional areas of activation to that in control stimulation with pink noise were involved. There were frontal and parietal areas which perform the function of analysis of spatial information and also the region of the angular gyrus. Furthermore BOLD-signal in the areas remained to be enhanced after the end of adaptation to motion and decayed gradually within 30 s. Pilot experiments with use of sound recordings of human steps as auditory stimuli had shown the same areas of activation but with much stronger activation.