From Seeing and Reaching to Hearing and Speaking

Abstract

This far-ranging chapter provides unified explanations of data about audition, speech, and language, and the general cognitive processes that they specialize. The ventral What stream and dorsal Where cortical stream in vision have analogous ventral sound-to-meaning and dorsal sound-to-action streams in audition. Circular reactions for learning to reach using vision are homologous to circular reactions for learning to speak using audition. VITE circuits control arm movement properties of synergy, synchrony, and speed. Volitional basal ganglia GO signals choose which limb to move and how fast it moves. VAM models use a circular reaction to calibrate VITE circuit signals. VITE is joined with the FLETE model to compensate for variable loads, unexpected perturbations, and obstacles. Properties of cells in cortical areas 4 and 5, spinal cord, and cerebellum are quantitatively simulated. Motor equivalent reaching using clamped joints or tools arises from circular reactions that learn representations of space around an actor. Homologous circuits model motor-equivalent speech production, including coarticulation. Stream-shroud resonances play the role for audition that surface-shroud resonances play in vision. They support auditory consciousness and speech production. Strip maps and spectral-pitch resonances cooperate to solve the cocktail party problem whereby humans track voices of speakers in noisy environments with multiple sources. Auditory streaming and speaker normalization use networks with similar designs. Item-Order-Rank working memories and Masking Field networks temporarily store sequences of events while categorizing them into list chunks. Analog numerical representations and place-value number systems emerge from phylogenetically earlier Where and What stream spatial and categorical processes.