1.3 Hypothesis, A supramodal organization
The preceding sections have outlined the missing piece: while the dual-stream architecture of the auditory cortex is well established, the prefrontal regions that coordinate these streams from the top-down remain under-explored. For the visual system, this question has been resolved - FEF and IFJa act as dissociable control hubs for the dorsal and ventral streams (Bedini & Baldauf (2021)); whether a comparable organization exists for the auditory domain is still unknown.
We hypothesize that the resting-state functional connectivity will show a clear dissociation of the auditory ‘what’ and ‘where’-streams: the auditory ‘where’-stream preferentially connects to the Frontal Eye Field (FEF), and the auditory ‘what’-stream to the anterior Inferior Frontal Junction (IFJa).
If confirmed, this dissociation would provide evidence for a supramodal organizational principle of the prefrontal cortex, with FEF and IFJa acting as domain-general hubs for top-down attentional control across sensory modalities. This study tests a first step toward that larger claim by examining whether FEF and IFJa connectivity profiles in the auditory domain mirror those established for vision.
Notes & Scrapbook
Hier Dinge abladen, die noch keinen Platz im Text haben, damit der Schreibfluss nicht stoppt.