Biologists locate brain's processing point for acoustic signals essential to human communication
Thursday, March 8, 2012 - 15:30
in Biology & Nature
In both animals and humans, vocal signals used for communication contain a wide array of different sounds that are determined by the vibrational frequencies of vocal cords. Knowing how the brain sorts out these different frequencies -- which are called frequency-modulated sweeps—is believed to be essential to understanding many hearing-related behaviors, like speech. Now, a pair of biologists has identified how and where the brain processes this type of sound signal.