Songbirds learn to sing by memorizing a tutor song that they then vocally mimic using auditory feedback. This developmental sequence suggests that brain areas that encode auditory memories communicate with brain areas for learned vocal control. In the songbird, the secondary auditory telencephalic region caudal mesopallium (CM) contains neurons that encode aspects of auditory experience. We inv...

Behavioral audiometry may be of limited value for those patients who have incurred significant brain injury and remain unresponsive to auditory stimuli. Even the more "objective" tests such as auditory brainstem response (ABR) and acoustic reflex testing may be inadequate tools to assess peripheral auditory function when significant brainstem injury has occurred. Determination of peripheral hea...

Tinnitus is the perception of a sound in the absence of an external sound source. It is characterized by sensory components such as the perceived loudness, the lateralization, the tinnitus type (pure tone, noise-like) and associated emotional components, such as distress and mood changes. Source localization of quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) data demonstrate the involvement of audit...

Moving animals have developed a brain in order to reduce the inherent uncertainty present in an ever changing environment. The auditory system permits to perceive danger, food or a potential partner at a distance, even when it cannot be seen. When the auditory system cannot pick-up certain sounds, eg due to hearing loss, the brain will try to reduce the increased uncertainty associated with the...

OBJECTIVE To assess auditory processing, hearing difficulties, and brain magnetic resonance (MR) imaging abnormalities in children with panocular developmental aniridia due to PAX6 mutations. DESIGN Case-control study. SETTING Great Ormond Street Hospital and Institute of Child Health. PARTICIPANTS Eleven case subjects with PAX6 mutations and 11 age-matched and sex-matched healthy control...

Perception of our environment is a multisensory experience; information from different sensory systems like the auditory, visual and tactile is constantly integrated. Complex tasks that require high temporal and spatial precision of multisensory integration put strong demands on the underlying networks but it is largely unknown how task experience shapes multisensory processing. Long-term music...

The mechanism of loss of consciousness (LOC) under anesthesia is unknown. Because consciousness depends on activity in the cortico-thalamic network, anesthetic actions on this network are likely critical for LOC. Competing theories stress the importance of anesthetic actions on bottom-up "core" thalamo-cortical (TC) vs. top-down cortico-cortical (CC) and matrix TC connections. We tested these m...

1) Oster’s idea was to use the perception of binaural beats as a diagnostic tool because some people are unable to perceive and respond to them. Oster never mentions brainwaves or entrainment as a function of binaural beats. This is interesting since nearly every company advertising binaural beats claims Oster invented binaural beat brainwave entrainment. 2) People with certain neurological con...