Revealing a neuroanatomically precise figure of the central auditory system

Hiroaki Tsukano is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurophysiology at the Brain Research Institute, Niigata University, Japan. His research seeks to shed greater light on the mysteries of the auditory cortex. ‘The auditory cortex is the highest order centre for sound information processing and is located in the lateral sides of both brain hemispheres,’ he explains. ‘After sound enters the ear, the sound information is conveyed through the course of the auditory ascending pathway towards the auditory cortex. The simple, most famous factor of sound is “height” of tones. However, it is already known that animals can detect the height of tone even after the auditory cortex in both brain hemispheres is totally removed. This is because information of height is processed in peripheral parts that exist in the middle of the auditory ascending pathway.’ Tsukano believes the auditory cortex has complex neuronal mechanisms to process complex sound factors and he wishes to discover these.