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Neural mechanisms in audition
Author(s) -
Galambos Robert
Publication year - 1958
Publication title -
the laryngoscope
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.181
H-Index - 148
eISSN - 1531-4995
pISSN - 0023-852X
DOI - 10.1002/lary.5540680317
Subject(s) - citation , computer science , library science , psychology
OUR REVIEWER has been instructed to deal with his subject matter in a comprehensive, analytic, critical manner, “setting forth the present status of our knowledge, making generalizations for which the collected data are adequate, and pointing out gaps in factual knowledge.” He has approached this task with the viewpoint that what we know about hearing rests upon the threefold base of psychophysics, neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. Hearing is in the beginning a problem for psychology because the precise measurement of what men and animals discriminate about sounds is at the same time a definition of the phenomena for which the other two disciplines are to uncover neural correlates. Neuroanatomy is called upon to provide the data from which emerge suggestions and controlled speculations on what structures might be involved in the hearing process, and these, when integrated with the data of neurophysiology (with significant assistance from biophysics and acoustics at least), can be expected to lead to the common goal, namely a simple, rational and adequate set of neural correlates for auditory experience. No one discipline can accomplish all this alone. Audition being a large subject matter, some limits must be placed upon any discussion of it. This review concerns itself mainly with the neural basis for the detection and discrimination of tones, a function loosely subsumed under the term pit& applied to the human auditory experience. History shows that much thought has been devoted to the question of what goes on in the brain as people achieve their analysis of tones, and of the many subjective attributes of tones-pitch, loudness, brightness, volume and density at least (rq)-the pitch problem has always occupied a pre-eminent position. This review continues the tradition. With respect to what is omitted, two recent books (149, 166) competently present the basic facts of audition and, for those who wish to go even further, ample suggestions for further reading will be found in a recently published ssoo-item bibliography (II).