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Division of labor between left and right brain hemispheres is a feature of vertebrate brains. The evolutionary advantage of dividing processing tasks is the ability to process different types of information at once, and to perform parallel tasks, like those involved in driving a car. Speech and melody are both processed in the left and right auditory cortex of the brain, respectively. However, it has been unclear how these brain areas carry out different functions.

Human studies have demonstrated that the left superior temporal gyrus mediates language processing and responds mainly to the rapidly-occurring components of spoken language. In contrast, the right superior temporal gyrus responds to information above the level of individual words like pitch and loudness. Studies of human language suggest the differences in signal processing in each hemisphere determine this division of labor. 

City College of New York neurophysiologist Hysell Oviedo and colleagues studied auditory processing in mice in order to better understand the brain circuit features and neural computations between these lateralized processes.

“The human brain’s remarkable ability to simultaneously understand the lyrics of your favorite song and appreciate its musical qualities is poorly understood,” said Oviedo.

Oviedo and her colleagues screened mouse cortical connectivity and measured temporal integration differences between the left and right auditory cortex. They mapped activation of principal neurons in all cortical layers and found stronger activation in the superficial layers of the right auditory cortex compared to the left. The team also used novel statistical methods to demonstrate a link between stronger self-excitation and longer temporal integration. These findings indicate longer processing times in the right auditory cortex, a key feature in decoding slower components of speech and music.

Their results demonstrate a link between stronger synaptic connections and longer network time scales in the right hemisphere.

The study appears in the .

“These findings are an important advance in our understanding of language processing in the brain and could provide some insight into deficits observed in communication disorders,” said Oviedo. “Our results are particularly relevant to dyslexia, which appears to involve disruptions in the brain’s temporal processing of language. We now have a rudimentary understanding of what neural mechanisms could potentially be affected.”

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