Neurons and objects: The case of auditory cortex

Israel Nelken*, Omer Bar-Yosef

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

52 Scopus citations

Abstract

Sounds are encoded into electrical activity in the inner ear, where they are represented (roughly) as patterns of energy in narrow frequency bands. However, sounds are perceived in terms of their high-order properties. It is generally believed that this transformation is performed along the auditory hierarchy, with low-level physical cues computed at early stages of the auditory system and high-level abstract qualities at high-order cortical areas. The functional position of primary auditory cortex (A1) in this scheme is unclear - is it quotidnearlyquotidn, encoding physical cues, or is it quotidnlatequotidn, already encoding abstract qualities? Here we argue that neurons in cat A1 show sensitivity to high-level features of sounds. In particular, these neurons may already show sensitivity to quotidnauditory objectsquotidn. The evidence for this claim comes from studies in which individual sounds are presented singly and in mixtures. Many neurons in cat A1 respond to mixtures in the same way they respond to one of the individual components of the mixture, and in many cases neurons may respond to a low-level component of the mixture rather than to the acoustically dominant one, even though the same neurons respond to the acoustically-dominant component when presented alone.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)107-113
Number of pages7
JournalFrontiers in Neuroscience
Volume2
Issue numberJUL
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009

Keywords

  • Auditory cortex
  • Auditory objects
  • Cats
  • Complex sounds
  • Electrophysiology
  • Single neurons

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