Background: Positron emission tomography (PET) measures cerebral blood flow, an indicator of neural activity. PET has been used successfully to identify visual association areas in the human brain, which are involved in the analysis of different aspects of visual stimuli. However, comparable studies have not yet been carried out for the human auditory system.
Results: We have attempted to identify human cortical areas that are selectively activated during sound movement analysis. Using PET, we have identified cortical areas that appeared to be selectively activated while human subjects attended to the position of a moving sound image compared to when they attended to a stationary sound image. The areas are in the right insula, adjacent to the right posterior cingulate, and in the cerebellum.
Conclusions: We suggest that the insula may be acting as an auditory association cortex involved in sound movement analysis, analogous to area V5 in the visual system.