Computational neural modelling of auditory cortical receptive fields

Abstract

Acoustic signals are mainly characterized by their temporal dynamics. Electrophysiological studies have shown that neurons in the primary auditory cortex (A1) can detect fine temporal structure of acoustic stimuli [1]. The traditional view of auditory processing describes how the temporal codes of sounds are distributed in the frequency domain along the auditory pathway from the basilar membrane to the cortex. Therefore, it is important to consider a sound's spectral and temporal features together. The spectrotemporal receptive field (STRF) is a description of the auditory system's input-to-output transformation encompassing both the spectral and temporal features. The STRF of A1 neurons exhibit complex patterns that can undergo rapid task-related changes [2]. However, the mechanisms by which cortical neurons change their STRF remains unclear.