Matthew
M. Cheung1, 2, Condon Lau1, 2,
Joe S. Cheng1, 2, Iris Y. Zhou1, 2,
Kevin C. Chan1, 3, Jevin W. Zhang1, 2,
Ed X. Wu1, 2
1Biomedical Imaging and Signal Processing, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China; 2Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China; 3Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
In this study, tonotopic changes in normal animals with increased sound pressure level (SPL) and in animals injured by post-natal noise exposure (NE) were investigated using a novel fMRI paradigm that integrates distortion-free MRI and continuous frequency sweeping. Our results demonstrated the capability of this proposed novel auditory fMRI paradigm to study subtle shift and alteration in the tonotopy. This technique can potentially characterize the auditory neuronal response and facilitate investigation of auditory information processing in cortical and subcortical structures.