Fig. 1

Group Analysis of auditory fMRI data following binaural stimulation with sparse temporal sampling paradigm. Functional data following auditory stimulation was collected for each dog using a T2* weighted functional MRI sequence. Afterwards the data was normalized to Datta’s atlas of the dog brain [34] and a statistical group analysis was performed. In the images above, all regions showing significant activation are displayed as colored pixels, which were superimposed onto dorsal slices of Datta’s brain atlas [34]. The gap between two adjacent slices is 2 mm. The colorbar indicates the t-values of the activated voxels. The pictures show unilateral activation of the right superior olivary nucleus in the brainstem (a-b, arrow 1). This activation can be traced dorsally along the lateral lemniscus (c-d, arrow 2) to the much larger bilateral activation of the caudal colliculi and further rostrally to the medial geniculate nuclei (e-j); merging activations marked with arrow 3. An activation matching the position of the right internal capsule can be found on pictures k-l (arrow 4). In addition to this, a small activated area was found in a region which is not normally associated with the auditory system (g-h, arrow 5). No significantly activated voxels were found in the auditory cortex