THE AUDITORY-CORTEX

The division of the auditory cortex into various fields, functional as pects of these fields, and neuronal coding in the primary auditory cor tical field (AI) are reviewed with stress on features that may be comm on to mammals. On the basis of 14 topographies and clustered distribut ions of neuronal response characteristics in the primary auditory cort ical field, a hypothesis is developed of how a certain complex acousti c pattern may be encoded in an equivalent spatial activity pattern in AI, generated by time-coordinated firing of groups of neurons. The aud itory cortex, demonstrated specifically for AI, appears to perform sou nd analysis by synthesis, i.e. by combining spatially distributed coin cident or time-coordinated neuronal responses. The dynamics of sounds and the plasticity of cortical responses are considered as a topic for research.