ABSTRACT
One of the major goals of auditory neuroscience is to explain psychophysical performance in terms of neuronal processing (see Nelken et al., 2004). While this can be attempted for psychophysical tasks of various complexities and at all processing levels of the auditory system, it would seem reasonable to start with seemingly easy paradigms, for example, the detection of simple stimuli in quiet. A detailed knowledge of how the system at the perceptual level and of how individual neurons, e.g. in auditory cortex, reach threshold in response to sounds is likely to also promote a more thorough understanding of sound coding by individual neurons and populations.
