Abstract #0302

bSSFP fMRI Study of Sound Amplitude Modulation in Inferior Colliculus

Jevin W. Zhang¹,², Condon Lau¹, Patrick P. Gao¹,², Joe S. Cheng¹,², Gehua Tong¹, Iris Y. Zhou¹,², Ed X. Wu¹,²

¹Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Signal Processing, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China; ²Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

Amplitude modulation (AM) is an essential feature of most natural acoustic signals and it is important in variety of sound perceptual tasks. The periodotopic map in inferior colliculus is based on the temporal analysis of periodic envelop or AM information. In this study we demonstrated the detection of spatial encoding of AM sound frequency using continuous bSSFP fMRI. Furthermore, the AM frequency encoding gradient was observed to be orthogonal to the sound spectrum frequency encoding or tonotopy gradient. Our findings can help us understand more about the auditory processing and hearing disorders.