1.2 The Gap, Top-Down Control of Auditory Streams
The division into dorsal and ventral pathways is well-documented(Ahveninen et al. (2006) - PNAS, Hickok & Poeppel 2007 - Nature), but misses how these streams are top-down coordinated. To manage this, the top-down attention is required to filter relevant information and suppress distractors (De Vries & Baldauf (2021) - Journal of Neuroscience). The question remains: Which prefrontal regions act as the conductors for these auditory streams?
In the visual system this question has been answered. Recent neuroimagning research has identified the double-association in the prefrontal cortex, conducted by the FEF and IFJ:
- Frontal Eye Field (FEF): a dorsal region specialized for spatial processing and oculomotor control. It performs a strong top-down influence over the visual where (“dorsal”) stream (Bedini & Baldauf (2021), Bedini (2023) - Brain Structure).
- anterior Inferior Frontal Junction (IFJa): a region located ventrally from the FEF and controls the visual wha “ventral” stream specializing on object-based attention (Bedini & Baldauf (2021))
This is demonstrates a clear “control hub” hierarchy for vision. For the auditory system, the exact top-down “control hubs” are less defined. While Rolls et al. (2023) - Cerebral Cortex and Frühholz (2015) - NeuroImage point out especially IFG and Broca’s areas, such as BA44, 44, BA45, 45, as hubs, this is mainly for the semantic language pathway. There is still a piece missing for the exact controllers, especially for the auditory where-stream. Hickok & Poeppel 2007 - Nature mention a dorsal-motor pathway which might be located in the PT (Hickok & Poeppel 2007 - Nature).
Notes & Scrapbook
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