ABSTRACT
To extract meaning from the many sources of sound in the environment, we must be able to sense, encode, and interpret auditory patterns. Fortunately, humans have a number of sophisticated physical structures in the auditory processing system that are specially designed to receive, organize, and encode acoustic information. These structures are what give humans the remarkable ability to recognize meaningful patterns from among the cacophony of sounds present in the acoustic environment: auditory pattern recognition. The auditory structures and the associated processes that make possible this ability are the focus of this chapter.
