The local circuits described in the previous section are organized together to form cortical areas, of which auditory cortex has several. Within primary auditory cortex (A1), the local circuits are organized tonotopically, although there was a substantial controversy as to how tight this organization is [10, 11, 12, 13].Tischbirek et al. [14 •] mapped responses of large populations of , The ability to process and perceive sensory stimuli is an essential function for animals. Among the sensory modalities, audition is crucial for communication, pleasure, care for the young, and perceiving threats. The auditory cortex (ACtx) is a key sound processing region that combines ascending signals from the auditory periphery and inputs from other sensory and non-sensory regions. The , An integrated overview of hearing and the interplay of physical, biological, and psychological processes underlying it. Every time we listen—to speech, to music, to footsteps approaching or retreating—our auditory perception is the result of a long chain of diverse and intricate processes that unfold within the source of the sound itself, in the air, in our ears, and, most of all, in our , Animals must be sensitive to regularities in the environment in order to extract behaviorally-relevant information from sensory streams. This process, known as statistical learning, allows animals to adapt their perception of stimuli based on the underlying patterns or structures of sensory input (Thiessen, 2017; Aslin, 2017).This form of learning typically occurs in the absence of explicit , mechanosensory transduction systems is illustrated in Fig. 1; its key feature is a transduction channel that detects deflection of an external structure relative to an internal, Research has also begun to explore the neural basis of auditory attention to music, which presents a complex challenge similar to that presented by selective auditory attention to speech [56]. As an example of future directions, a recent study [ 105 ] has shown that attention can enhance ERPs elicited by deviations in harmonic context..