On the role of space and time in auditory processing

Unlike visual and tactile stimuli, auditory signals that allow perception o f timbre, pitch and localization are temporal. To process these, the audito ry nervous system must either possess specialized neural machinery for anal yzing temporal input, or transform the initial responses into patterns that are spatially distributed across its sensory epithelium. The former hypoth esis, which postulates the existence of structures that facilitate temporal processing, is most popular. However, I argue that the cochlea transforms sound into spatiotemporal response patterns on the auditory nerve and centr al auditory stages; and that a unified computational framework exists for c entral auditory, visual and other sensory processing. Specifically, I expla in how four fundamental concepts in visual processing play analogous roles in auditory processing.