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Book Review: Cortical Neurons That Localize Sounds

Kresge Hearing Research Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, jmidd{at}umich.edu

Li Xu

Kresge Hearing Research Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Shigeto Furukawa

Kresge Hearing Research Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Ewan A. Macpherson

Kresge Hearing Research Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Efforts to locate a cortical map of auditory space generally have proven unsuccessful. At moderate sound levels, cortical neurons generally show large or unbounded spatial receptive fields. Within those large receptive fields, however, changes in sound location result in systematic changes in the temporal firing patterns such that single-neuron firing patterns can signal the locations of sound sources throughout as much as 360 degrees of auditory space. Neurons in the cat’s auditory cortex show accurate localization of broadband sounds, which human listeners localize accurately. Conversely, in response to filtered sounds that produce spatial illusions in human listeners, neurons signal systematically incorrect locations that can be predicted by a model that also predicts the listeners’ illusory reports. These results from the cat’s auditory cortex, as well as more limited results from nonhuman primates, suggest a model in which the location of any particular sound source is represented in a distributed fashion within individual auditory cortical areas and among multiple cortical areas.

Key Words: Sound localization • Auditory cortex • Spatial hearing

The Neuroscientist, Vol. 8, No. 1, 73-83 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/107385840200800112


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