Question

The Primary Auditory Area uses the location of the auditory receptors to determine the _______, and the frequency of action potentials to determine the _______.

A. loudness; pitch

B. pitch; direction of the sound

C. pitch; loudness

D. direction of the sound; pitch

E. loudness; direction

F. direction; loudness

Answer 1

Answer is D

According to the frequency theory of hearing, the frequency of the auditory nerve's impulses corresponds to the frequency of a tone, which allows us to detect its pitch.

auditory centers of the brain that are specially tuned to each cue: intensity and timing differences between the two ears. So, the brain is using both cues to localize sound sources. Your brain compares these differences and tells you where the sound is coming from

Neurons in the auditory cortex are organized according to the frequency of sound to which they respond best. Neurons at one end of the auditory cortex respond best to low frequencies; neurons at the other respond best to high frequencies. There are multiple auditory areas (much like the multiple areas in the visual cortex), which can be distinguished anatomically and on the basis that they contain a complete "frequency map." The purpose of this frequency map (known as a tonotopic map) likely reflects the fact that the cochlea is arranged according to sound frequency.

What is tonotopic map?

Tonotopy is the spatial arrangement of where sounds of different frequency are processed in the brain. Tones close to each other in terms of frequency are represented in topologically neighbouring regions in the brain.

Tonotopy in the auditory system begins at the cochlea, the small snail-like structure in the inner ear that sends information about sound to the brain. Different regions of the basilar membrane in the organ of Corti, the sound-sensitive portion of the cochlea, vibrate at different sinusoidal frequencies due to variations in thickness and width along the length of the membrane. Nerves that transmit information from different regions of the basilar membrane therefore encode frequency tonotopically. This tonotopy then projects through the vestibulocochlear nerve and associated midbrain structures to the primary auditory cortex via the auditory radiation pathway