CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 104Neuroscience and Music PerceptionHearing, Cochlea, Tinnitus, GeneticsPhonetics and Phonology Research

Neural representation of spectral and temporal information in speech

Open access
Young, Eric D·2008·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
DOI 10.1098/rstb.2007.2151PMC PMC2606788
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Speech is the most interesting and one of the most complex sounds dealt with by the auditory system. The neural representation of speech needs to capture those features of the signal on which the brain depends in language communication. Here we describe the representation of speech in the auditory nerve and in a few sites in the central nervous system from the perspective of the neural coding of important aspects of the signal. The representation is tonotopic, meaning that the speech signal is decomposed by frequency and different frequency components are represented in different populations of neurons. Essential to the representation are the properties of frequency tuning and nonlinear suppression. Tuning creates the decomposition of the signal by frequency, and nonlinear suppression is essential for maintaining the representation across sound levels. The representation changes in central auditory neurons by becoming more robust against changes in stimulus intensity and more transient. However, it is probable that the form of the representation at the auditory cortex is fundamentally different from that at lower levels, in that stimulus features other than the distribution of energy across frequency are analysed.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1098/rstb.2007.2151

Cites

166 of 166 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Type II afferents are far less able to support discriminative hearing than type I afferents whose activity accounts for acoustic intensity, frequency and timing.

    “Whatever the acoustic sensitivity of type II afferents, they must be far less able to support discriminative hearing than type I afferents whose activity accounts for acoustic intensity, frequency and timing (32).”

    From Damage-evoked signals in cochlear neurons and supporting cells (2024) · cites this paper as [32]

    Section 2 describes auditory-nerve fibres encoding sound level and frequency, section 3 describes the timing of their spikes, and section 7 links their discharge rates to vowel discrimination. Our copy does not identify those fibres as type I or compare their ability to support discriminative hearing with type II afferents. (LLM, conf=0.83)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 4

  1. Chen G.-D, Nuding S.C, Narayan S.S, Sinex D.G. Responses of single neurons in the chinchilla inferior colliculus to consonant–vowel syllables differing in voice onset time. Aud. Neurosci. 1996;3:179–198. [Google Scholar]
  2. Romand R, Avan P. Anatomical and functional aspects of the cochlear nucleus. In: Ehret G, Romand R, editors. The central auditory system. Oxford University Press; New York, NY: 1997. pp. 97–191. [Google Scholar]
  3. Rouiller E.M. Functional organization of the auditory pathways. In: Ehret G, Romand R, editors. The central auditory system. Oxford University Press; New York, NY: 1997. pp. 3–96. [Google Scholar]
  4. Young E.D, Oertel D. The cochlear nucleus. In: Shepherd G.M, editor. Synaptic organization of the brain. Oxford University Press; New York, NY: 2003. pp. 125–163. [Google Scholar]

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Young, E. D.
Affiliations
Johns Hopkins University (US)
Corresponding author
Young, Eric D
ORCID
Young, Eric D
Venue
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
Publisher
The Royal Society
Published
2007-09-07
Volume
363
Issue
1493
Pages
923-945
ISSN
  • 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
  • 1471-2970
DOI
10.1098/rstb.2007.2151
PMC
PMC2606788
OpenAlex
W2140676414
Cited by
104
References
166
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 11 · 2012: 9
FWCI
2.50
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
royalsociety.org/journals/ethics-policies/data-sharing-mining/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R01DC000109, R01DC000115)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neuroscience and Music Perception
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Sensory Systems › Hearing, Cochlea, Tinnitus, Genetics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Phonetics and Phonology Research
Keywords
speech perception, neural coding, tonotopy, auditory nerve, frequency tuning, auditory cortex, temporal coding, spectral representation, stimulus intensity, central auditory processing
MeSH terms
Acoustic Stimulation, Animals, Brain, Brain Mapping, Cats, Cochlea, Cochlear Nerve, Humans, Models, Neurological, Sound, Speech Perception, Time Factors

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review