Part 1 The developing auditory system: organization and development of the avian brain stem auditory system; modulation of cell adhesion molecules during induction and differentiation of the auditory placode; stimulus coding in the developing auditory system; experience shapes sound localization and auditory unit properties during development in the barn owl. Part 2: The cochlea and auditory nerve: cochlear neurobiology - some key experiments and concepts of the past two decades; cochlear macromechanics; psychophysical aspects of auditory intensity coding; encoding of sound intensity by auditory neurons. Part 3 Neurons, projections, and representations: response properties of cochlear nucleus neurons in relationship to physiological mechanisms; electrical characteristics of cells and neuronal circuitry in the cochlear nuclei studied with intracellular recordings from brain slices; coding of temporal patterns in the central auditory nervous system; frequency resolution, spectral filtering, and integration on the neuronal level; neural mechanisms underlying interaural time sensitivity to tones and noise; auditory mechanisms underlying a neural code for space in the cat's superior colliculus; organization of the cat's auditory thalamus; dynamic modulation of the auditory system by associative learning. Part 4 Psychophysics: timing, masking, and lateralization: temporal mechanisms in auditory stimulus coding; peripheral and central factors in intensity perception; dynamic aspects of auditory masking; auditory profile analysis: some experiments on spectral shape discrimination; pitch perception and the segregation and integration of auditory entities; onset-coding in lateralization: its form, site, and function. Part 5 Neuroethology, audition, and speech: auditory neuroethology and speech processing: complex sound processing by combination-sensitive neurons; neurophysiological and anatomical substrates of sound localization in the owl; representation of speech in the auditory periphery; specialized perceiving systems for speech and other biologically significant sounds.
