Key Publications
The effects of aging on auditory cortical function
Age-related hearing loss is a prominent deficit, afflicting approximately half of the geriatric population. Often, the person may have no deficits in detecting sounds, but still struggles to understand speech, particularly in a noisy environment. Here I review recent evidence of age-related hearing loss at the level of the core (primary auditory cortex, A1) and belt (caudolateral field, CL) in young and aged animals with normal detection thresholds. The findings are consistent with an age-related imbalance of excitation and inhibition in the auditory cortex. Spatial and temporal processing deficits could explain difficulty in understanding speech. Read more.
Individual Variability in the Functional Organization of the Cerebral Cortex Across a Lifetime: A Substrate for Evolution Across Generations
The dynamic changes in the functional organization of the cerebral cortex have been well documented over the past several decades. Individuals vary considerably both in the extent of cortical reorganization as well as in perceptual abilities. A good example of this are the changes that occur in the cortex and at each subcortical station in the auditory system. These changes are reviewed in the context of how such individual differences could account for both cross-species as well as cross-individual evolution. Read more.
Perception of auditory signals
Auditory signals are decomposed into discrete frequency elements that are later recombined into identifiable, familiar percepts. The cerebral cortex perceives these signals; the neural mechanisms that make this possible have been of interest. This review highlights recent studies indicating that perceptual abilities are better explained by the activity of populations of neurons rather than single neurons, assesses how population activity could also underlie the perception of the nonspatial features of acoustic stimuli, and illustrates how multisensory interactions can influence our auditory perception. Read more.
The biological basis of audition
Audition is the perception of acoustic auditory objects and/or events and is used to determine where sounds originate from in space and what those sounds are. Neural processing of acoustic signals occurs in various parts of the brain, extracting multiple salient features that are then transmitted to the cerebral cortex. This entry explores…
- The early processing from the cochlea to the cerebral cortex
- The neural mechanisms of audition for spatial and non-spatial perception
- How animal models relate to current studies in human subjects
- Future studies that will improve our understanding of the neural mechanisms of audition.