Functional Organisation and Plasticity of the Auditory Cortex

One of the most important neuroscientific findings during the last decade has been that the central nervous system (CNS) is capable of reacting with plastic reorganization to altered conditions. The ability of the CNS to exhibit such plasticity had now been demonstrated in the auditory, visual and somatosensory systems. Owing to the development of noninvasive functional imaging techniques, such as magnetoencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging, these alterations can now be traced not only in animals, but also in humans. This publication presents noninvasive studies of the functional organization and reorganization of the human auditory cortex compared with invasive animal investigations. Among the topics covered are the relationship between function and structure of the auditory cortex, representation of speech sounds at different levels of the auditory system, hemispheric differences, plastic reorganization of tonotopic maps after cochlear damage, and learning-induced receptive field plasticity. Neuroscientists, neurologists and neurophysiologists will find the sections on cortical plasticity of particular interest, while audiologists will appreciate the valuable data on the functional organization of the auditory system.