人类听觉皮层的时间整合主要与绝对时间相关联，这一成果由哥伦比亚大学Nima Mesgarani课题组经过不懈努力而取得。2025年9月18日出版的《自然—神经科学》杂志发表了这一最新研究成果。

为了回答这个问题，小组重新调整了所有语音结构的持续时间，主题是时间的拉伸和压缩，并测量了人类听觉皮层的整合窗口，主题是一种新的实验和计算方法，适用于时空精确的颅内记录。课题组研究人员观察到拉伸语音的整合窗口略长，但相对于结构持续时间的变化，这种延长非常小（约5%），即使在与语音特定处理密切相关的非主要区域也是如此。这些发现表明，时间轭计算在整个人类听觉皮层中占主导地位，对结构处理的神经计算模型施加了重要的限制。

据了解，音素和单词等声音结构的持续时间变化很大。因此，在绝对时间内进行积分（例如，100 ms）与声音结构（例如音素）的关系。传统上，听觉和认知模型分别从时间和结构的角度来描述神经整合，但皮层计算在多大程度上反映了时间或结构仍是未知的。

附：英文原文

Title: Temporal integration in human auditory cortex is predominantly yoked to absolute time

Author: Norman-Haignere, Sam V., Keshishian, Menoua, Devinsky, Orrin, Doyle, Werner, McKhann, Guy M., Schevon, Catherine A., Flinker, Adeen, Mesgarani, Nima

Issue&Volume: 2025-09-18

Abstract: Sound structures such as phonemes and words have highly variable durations. Therefore, there is a fundamental difference between integrating across absolute time (for example, 100ms) versus sound structure (for example, phonemes). Auditory and cognitive models have traditionally cast neural integration in terms of time and structure, respectively, but the extent to which cortical computations reflect time or structure remains unknown. Here, to answer this question, we rescaled the duration of all speech structures using time stretching and compression and measured integration windows in the human auditory cortex using a new experimental and computational method applied to spatiotemporally precise intracranial recordings. We observed slightly longer integration windows for stretched speech, but this lengthening was very small (~5%) relative to the change in structure durations, even in non-primary regions strongly implicated in speech-specific processing. These findings demonstrate that time-yoked computations dominate throughout the human auditory cortex, placing important constraints on neurocomputational models of structure processing.

DOI: 10.1038/s41593-025-02060-8

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02060-8