Neural Basis of Audition

Abstract

This chapter reviews the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the auditory system. A brief introduction to the key acoustical parameters that are important for understanding the physiological literature is included. Responses to simple tonal stimuli and to some more complex sounds are described for several levels of the auditory pathway, from the auditory nerve to the auditory cortex . Responses of central neurons to binaural stimuli are described in the context of spatial localization. A brief description of the descending pathways is also included. Where applicable, neural responses are described in terms of both average discharge rates and temporal response properties. The influence of the nonlinear, or level‐dependent, properties of the cochlea on average‐rate and temporal responses of auditory neurons are described; these nonlinearities are an important property of the healthy inner ear and have been a major focus of recent research on the auditory system.

A computational model of the responses of octopus neurons in the posteroventral cochlear nucleus (PVCN)

“…Tlie pure tone, the simplest form of sound, has been used in many electrophysiological experiments to investigate how the audi¬ tory system of mammals, including human, encodes related information (Carney, 2002) .…”