Pre-Stimulus Spontaneous Brain Activity Predicts the Subjective Assessment of Subject's-Own-Name

This project analyzed fMRI data from an experiment which sought to identify pre-stimulus spontaneous brain activity that could be used as predictors of the subjective assessment of noise as the subject’s own name (SON). Subjects were asked to distinguish SON from other names after being cued by fully masked auditory stimuli. A pre-stimulus contrast successfully identified possible predictors: more activation in the TPJ and R/LSTG when subjects thought they heard SON as compared to other names. A comparable contrast for the evoked-response indicated insula and dmPFC activation. Results from; behavioural data, a contrast based on objective stimuli and an interaction-effect ANOVA all confirmed that subjects could not identify names in the stimuli, thus supporting the assertion that subjects were indeed making subjective assessments. Reaction times were also found to be faster when subjects thought they heard other names as compared to SON.