Central Auditory Processing in the Mammalian System

In this chapter, the history of our understanding of the central auditory system is summarized, starting with the early ideas of the Greeks and Romans and proceeding through the shaping of ideas to the 1960s. The history of studies of the central auditory system involves a combination of theoretical conceptualizations, anatomical studies, physiological measurements, and psychophysical measurements. These approaches, which have been ongoing for more than two thousand years, have coexisted, and each approach has influenced the others. The presentation here includes a variety of approaches, focusing on neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and mathematical modeling; the goal is to capture the empirical and theoretical conceptualizations, with a focus on understanding the central neural processing of sounds. Although psychophysical studies are important and provide the basis for our knowledge of auditory capabilities, these studies are not explicitly reviewed in this chapter. The modeling of the sensory processing and central processing is explicitly discussed here to explain the relation of overall hearing abilities to the processing in the succeeding stages of the auditory system. The mathematical details of the modeling are not included here, but the important ideas that arise from the modeling are reviewed in terms of our understanding of the operation of the overall system.