audition

• Hearing alerts us to many types of useful information.
• Periodic compressions of air, water, or other media are sensed as auditory signals.
• Humans experience hearing by detecting sound waves.
• Sound waves are periodic compressions of air, water, or other media.
• Sound waves vary in amplitude and frequency.
• Amplitude refers to the intensity of the sound wave (loudness).
• Frequency is the number of compressions per second and is measured in hertz (Hz).
• Pitch is the psychoacoustical attribute of a sound wave, a person subjective perception of a sound wave, cannot be directly measured.
• Timbre is tone quality or tone complexity.
• Children hear higher frequencies than adults; the ability to recognize high frequencies diminishes with age and exposure to loud noises.
• Words are a way we use to categorize information regarding our perceptual world; we can tell what we think, know, imagine.
• More complex auditory stimulation, such as speech syllables, is analyzed in adjacent secondary auditory areas.
• Listening to words activates the posterior speech area, including Wernicke’s area.
• Area A1 analyzes incoming auditory signals while secondary areas are responsible for higher order processing required to analyze language sound patterns.
• Positron emission tomography (PET) is an imaging technique that detects changes in blood flow by measuring changes in the uptake of compounds such as oxygen or glucose.
• Making a phonetic discrimination activates the frontal region, including Broca’s area.
• Simple auditory stimulation, such as bursts of noise, is analyzed by area A1.
• Zatorre and colleagues (1992, 1995) found that passively listening to noise bursts activates the primary auditory cortex.
• Eliciting speech involves stimulation of the facial areas in the motor cortex and the somatosensory cortex, which produces some vocalization related to movements of the mouth and tongue.
• The auditory system must have a way to categorize sounds: deep, deck, duke …
• The auditory system can extract pitch, despite its source.
• People communicate emotion by alterations in pitch, loudness, and timbre (Prosody).
• Aprosodia is a neurological condition characterized by the inability of a person to properly convey or interpret emotional prosody.
• The inner ear contains a snail shaped structure called the cochlea.
• The cochlea contains three fluid-filled tunnels (scala vestibuli, scala media, & the scala tympani).
• Hair cells are auditory receptors that lie between the basilar membrane and the tectorial membrane in the cochlea.
• When displaced by vibrations in the fluid of the cochlea, they excite the cells of the auditory nerve.
• A1 produced simple tones (e.g., ringing sounds).
• Insula is located within the lateral fissure and is a multifunctional cortical tissue containing regions related to language, taste perception, and the neural structures underlying social cognition.
• Languages have many structural elements in common.
• Wernicke’s area is a posterior speech area at the rear of the left temporal lobe that regulates language comprehension, also called the posterior speech zone.
• Wernicke proposed a model explaining how areas in the left hemisphere interact to produce speech.
• Broca’s area produces a word by activating a specific motor programme.
• Language is universal in human populations.
• Tonotopic Representation of Area A1 is a concept in auditory neuroscience.
• Penfield used a weak electrical current to stimulate the brain surface.
• Wernicke’s area was apt to cause some interpretation of a sound (e.g., buzzing sound to a familiar source such as a cricket).
• Humans learn language early in life and seemingly without effort.
• Musical ability is generally a right-hemisphere specialization complementary to language ability, which is in the left hemisphere in most people.
• Broca’s area is an anterior speech area in the left hemisphere that functions with the motor cortex to produce the movements needed for speaking.