Navigation Links
Human mind: Sound and vision wired through same 'black box'

This release is available in French.

Montreal, August 12, 2009 Sounds and images share a similar neural code in the human brain, according to a new Canadian study. In the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists from the Universit de Montral and the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University explain how the same neural code in the brain allows people to distinguish between different types of sounds, such as speech and music, or different images.

Participants were recruited to undergo functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), a non-invasive form of brain mapping used to determine how the brain recognizes different characteristics in musical instruments, words from conversations or environmental sounds. Subjects underwent an exhaustive three hours of FMRI exams to provide precise information about how the brain reacts when different sounds are played.

"It turns out that the brain uses the same strategy to encode sounds than it uses to encode different images," explains lead author Marc Schnwiesner, a Universit de Montral psychology professor. "This may make it easier for people to combine sounds and images that belong to the same object, such as the dribbling of a basketball."

The next step for the researchers is to determine exactly how the brain distinguishes between rock drum beats to the strings of a symphony or from a French conversation to an English one. "Our goal is to disentangle exactly how the brain extracts these different types of sounds. This is a step may eventually let us reconstruct a song that a person has heard from according to the activity pattern in their brain," explains Dr. Schnwiesner, who is also a member of the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS), a joint Universit de Montral and McGill University think-tank on music and the mind.

As scientists advance in decoding brain activation patterns, says Dr. Schnwiesner, mind-boggling applications can be envisaged. "If researchers can reconstruct a song a person has heard according to an fMRI reading, we're not far off to being able to record brain patterns during sleep and reconstruct dreams," he predicts. "That would be really cool, although this possibility is decades of research away."


Contact: Sylvain-Jacques Desjardins
University of Montreal

Related medicine news :

1. PA Department of Health Confirms the First Human Case of West Nile Virus in Pennsylvania for 2009
2. Former UN Human Rights Rapporteur Offers 7 Points of Action on Iran to the UN Secretary General
3. VivaGel(R) Demonstrates Anti-HIV and Herpes Activity Following Human Administration
4. Unlocking the key to human fertility
5. Scientists ID First Human With Gorilla Strain of HIV
6. Webinar Offers Tips for Meeting Compliance Communications and Provides HRCI Credit for Human Resource Professionals
8. MEK4, genistein and invasion of human prostate cancer cells
10. Itanium Solutions Alliance Selects Swedens Kiwok as the 2009 Innovation Awards Winner for Humanitarian Impact
11. Ozen Engineering Inc. donates human body-modeling software to Clemson
Post Your Comments:
Related Image:
Breaking Medicine News(10 mins):
Breaking Medicine Technology: