![]() ![]() A complication lies in the nature of sound, which consists of rapid variations of the pressure in an elastic medium, usually air for most mammals. The challenging task that the auditory system faces is to process naturally occurring sounds, so that they can be identified, characterized, and localized, in order to be able to respond accordingly and in a timely manner. Introduction: The Auditory System Needs to Preserve the Timing of the Signal Here we review the multiple types of adaptation that occur in the auditory system, which are part of the pool of resources that the neurons employ to process the auditory scene, and are critical to a proper understanding of the neuronal mechanisms that govern auditory perception. In the auditory cortex, adaptation takes more elaborate forms, and contributes to the processing of complex sequences, auditory scene analysis and attention. For example, stimulus-specific adaptation, where neurons show adaptation to frequent, repetitive stimuli, but maintain their responsiveness to stimuli with different physical characteristics, thus representing a distinct kind of processing that may play a role in change and deviance detection. However, it is at higher levels in the auditory hierarchy where more sophisticated types of neuronal processing take place. For instance, auditory nerve fiber responses already experience adaptation of their firing rates, a type of response that can be found in many other auditory nuclei and may be useful for emphasizing the onset of the stimuli. ![]() At the same time, different processes of neuronal adaptation occur at several levels to further process the auditory information. ![]() The early stages of the auditory system need to preserve the timing information of sounds in order to extract the basic features of acoustic stimuli. 2Department of Cell Biology and Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain.1Auditory Neurophysiology Laboratory (Lab 1), Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain. ![]()
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