ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how sounds are processed by the early auditory system up to the primary and secondary auditory cortex. The hearing brain is concerned with extracting “constancy” out of an infinitely varying array of sensory input and it will actively interpret the sensory input. The hearing brain also uses stored knowledge to supplement the auditory input. The infinite set of different pitches that the brain perceives become parsed into a finite set of musical notes. Some brain-damaged patients are unable to recognize previously familiar melodies despite being able to recognize songs from spoken lyrics, and being able to recognize voices and environmental sounds. Cells within the auditory cortex may have differing degrees of specialization for the content of the sound versus the location of the sound. The chapter also considers auditory perception for three different classes of stimuli: music, voices and speech.
