18 Facts About Auditory cortex

Auditory cortex is the part of the temporal lobe that processes auditory information in humans and many other vertebrates.

Auditory cortex takes part in the spectrotemporal, meaning involving time and frequency, analysis of the inputs passed on from the ear.

Auditory cortex was previously subdivided into primary and secondary projection areas and further association areas.

Data about the auditory cortex has been obtained through studies in rodents, cats, macaques, and other animals.

In humans, the structure and function of the auditory cortex has been studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography, and electrocorticography.

Damage to the auditory cortex in humans leads to a loss of any awareness of sound, but an ability to react reflexively to sounds remains as there is a great deal of subcortical processing in the auditory brainstem and midbrain.

Neurons in the auditory cortex are organized according to the frequency of sound to which they respond best.

Neurons at one end of the auditory cortex respond best to low frequencies; neurons at the other respond best to high frequencies.

The auditory cortex is involved in tasks such as identifying and segregating "auditory objects" and identifying the location of a sound in space.

Animal studies indicate that auditory fields of the cerebral cortex receive ascending input from the auditory thalamus and that they are interconnected on the same and on the opposite cerebral hemispheres.

Auditory cortex is composed of fields that differ from each other in both structure and function.

Primary auditory cortex is subject to modulation by numerous neurotransmitters, including norepinephrine, which has been shown to decrease cellular excitability in all layers of the temporal cortex.

Auditory cortex is the most highly organized processing unit of sound in the brain.

The auditory cortex is divided into three separate parts: the primary, secondary, and tertiary auditory cortex.

Primary auditory cortex is tonotopically organized, which means that neighboring cells in the cortex respond to neighboring frequencies.

The primary auditory cortex receives direct input from the medial geniculate nucleus of the thalamus and thus is thought to identify the fundamental elements of music, such as pitch and loudness.

Auditory cortex has distinct responses to sounds in the gamma band.

The right auditory cortex has long been shown to be more sensitive to tonality, while the left auditory cortex has been shown to be more sensitive to minute sequential differences in sound, such as in speech.