Physiology of Thalamus and Cortex

Study of the responses of auditory forebrain neurons offers an exciting opportunity to understand the representation of the acoustic environment at the highest levels of the auditory system. During the past decade, echolocating bats have proved to be a valuable model for understanding the processing of biosonar sounds in the cortex. Multiple auditory fields have been identified that contain neurons specialized for extracting a variety of types of biosonar information relating to target velocity, range, size, etc., and in each field the neurons are arranged to form an orderly place map. These elegant studies have been reviewed by Suga (1978, 1982, 1984, 1988).