ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the basic acoustic patterns and the basic neural mechanisms that are shared, or possibly shared, by animals and humans for auditory perception. Acoustic communication is based on the neural processing of acoustic patterns, but no neurophysiology textbook to date has described what kinds of acoustic patterns humans and animals have to process. The richness of the acoustic pattern of speech sounds is primarily due to Frequency modulation components that result from the production of various phonemes in different sequences. In humans and animals, acoustic patterns can differ across frequency bands; or one acoustic pattern can be predominant in one frequency band and another acoustic pattern can be predominant in another frequency band. Combination-sensitive neurons are clustered at specific locations in the auditory system. The human auditory system would also be expected to construct central neurons that are quite different from peripheral neurons.
