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Auditory Perception

Auditory Perception

The auditory system is essential for sound perception, utilizing various critical structures. When sound waves enter the outer ear, they travel through the ear canal and cause the eardrum to vibrate. These vibrations are then transmitted to the middle ear, where three tiny bones – the malleus, incus, and stapes – amplify the sound. This amplification is crucial, as it ensures that the sound vibrations are strong enough to be conveyed to the inner ear. These vibrations then reach the cochlea, a...

Auditory Pathway

Auditory Pathway

Auditory pathways constitute the complex neural circuits responsible for transmitting and interpreting auditory information from the peripheral auditory system to the brain. Sound waves are initially captured by the outer ear, funneled through the ear canal, and reach the tympanic membrane (eardrum). These vibrations are transmitted via the middle ear's ossicles to the inner ear's cochlea.
When viewed cross-sectionally, the cochlea reveals the scala vestibuli and scala tympani flanking the...

Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

The cerebral cortex, the brain's outermost layer, is pivotal in processing complex cognitive tasks, emotions, and various sensory inputs and executing voluntary motor activities. This intricate structure is divided into three primary functional areas: the motor areas, sensory areas, and association areas.
Motor Areas
The motor areas located in the frontal lobe are central to controlling voluntary movements. This region is further subdivided into the primary motor cortex and the premotor cortex.

Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location

Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location

The human brain perceives pitch through two primary mechanisms reflected in place theory and frequency theory. Each mechanism describes how sound waves are interpreted as specific pitches by the brain, offering insights into the intricate processes of auditory perception.
Place theory, or place coding, suggests that different pitches are heard because various sound waves activate specific locations along the cochlea's basilar membrane. The brain determines the pitch of a sound by identifying...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 23, 2026

Measurement of Neurophysiological Signals of Ignoring and Attending Processes in Attention Control

Measurement of Neurophysiological Signals of Ignoring and Attending Processes in Attention Control

Published on: July 5, 2015

Spatial attention evokes similar activation patterns for visual and auditory stimuli.

David V Smith¹, Ben Davis, Kathy Niu

¹University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

|April 30, 2009

Summary

Neuroimaging reveals that the brain

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Last Updated: Jun 23, 2026

Measurement of Neurophysiological Signals of Ignoring and Attending Processes in Attention Control

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Mapping Cortical Dynamics Using Simultaneous MEG/EEG and Anatomically-constrained Minimum-norm Estimates: an Auditory Attention Example

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Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments

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Published on: January 23, 2017

Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Neuroimaging
Auditory and Visual Perception

Background:

Previous neuroimaging studies indicate a fronto-parietal network is involved in spatial expectation for visual information.
The role of this network in auditory spatial attention remains less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether a similar fronto-parietal network supports spatial attention for auditory stimuli as for visual stimuli.
To explore the neural mechanisms underlying cross-modal spatial attention.

Main Methods:

Utilized sparse functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activation.
Employed orthogonal-cuing paradigms with visual and auditory tasks, contrasting expected peripheral spatial targets with expected central targets.
Focused analysis on anticipated but unpresented stimuli to isolate perceptual orienting effects.

Main Results:

Observed similar fronto-parietal network activation for both visual and auditory spatial attention tasks.
A second experiment confirmed similar brain activation patterns for spatial selection of auditory stimuli, even when controlling for stimulus properties and task difficulty.
Demonstrated that spatial and temporal discriminations of musical instruments engaged comparable neural mechanisms.

Conclusions:

The neural mechanisms supporting spatial attention are largely conserved across visual and auditory modalities.
Suggests a shared neural architecture for processing spatial information regardless of sensory input.
Provides novel insights into cross-modal attentional control within the fronto-parietal network.