A specialized channel for encoding auditory transients in the magnocellular division of the human medial geniculate nucleus. Issue 15 (7th September 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Meng, Qianli; Schneider, Keith A.
• Is Part Of: NeuroReport. Volume 33:Issue 15(2022)
• Page Start: 663
• Page End: 668
• Publication Date: 2022-09-07
• Subjects: central auditory system -- medial geniculate nucleus -- magnocellular -- temporal processing -- thalamus; Neurosciences -- Periodicals; Nervous system -- Periodicals; Neurophysiology -- Periodicals; Nervous System Diseases -- Periodicals; Nervous System Physiological Phenomena -- Periodicals; Neurosciences -- Periodicals; 616.805
• DOI: 10.1097/WNR.0000000000001830
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0959-4965

Abstract

Abstract : We test the hypothesis that there exists a generalized magnocellular system in the brain optimized for temporal processing. In the visual system, it is well known that the magnocellular layers in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) are strongly activated by transients and quickly habituate. However, little is known about the perhaps analogous magnocellular division of the medial geniculate nucleus (MGN), the auditory relay in the thalamus. We measured the functional responses of the MGN in 11 subjects who passively listened to sustained and transient nonlinguistic sounds, using functional MRI. We observed that voxels in the ventromedial portion of the MGN, corresponding to the magnocellular division, exhibited a robust preference to transient sounds, consistently across subjects, whereas the remainder of the MGN did not discriminate between sustained and transient sounds. We conclude that the magnocellular neurons in the MGN parallel the magnocellular neurons in its visual counterpart, LGN, and constitute an information stream specialized for encoding auditory dynamics.