Erratum to “Neural coding of temporal information in auditory thalamus and cortex”: [Neuroscience 154 (2008) 294–303

Abstract

How the brain processes temporal information embedded in sounds is a core question in auditory re- search. This article synthesizes recent studies from our laboratory regarding neural representations of time-vary- ing signals in auditory cortex and thalamus in awake mar- moset monkeys. Findings from these studies show that 1) the primary auditory cortex (A1) uses a temporal represen- tation to encode slowly varying acoustic signals and a firing rate-based representation to encode rapidly chang- ing acoustic signals, 2) the dual temporal-rate representa- tions in A1 represent a progressive transformation from the auditory thalamus, 3) firing rate-based representations in the form of a monotonic rate-code are also found to encode slow temporal repetitions in the range of acoustic flutter in A1 and more prevalently in the cortical fields rostral to A1 in the core region of marmoset auditory cor- tex, suggesting further temporal-to-rate transformations in higher cortical areas. These findings indicate that the auditory cortex forms internal representations of temporal characteris- tics of sounds that are no longer faithful replicas of their acous- tic structures. We suggest that such transformations are nec- essary for the auditory cortex to perform a wide range of functions including sound segmentation, object processing and multi-sensory integration. © 2008 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.