Cortical bases for auditory perception.

A surgeon places electrodes directly on the surface of a patient's brain to record the electrical chatter of auditory cortex cells as the patient hears a pitch or identifies a sound object. This research addresses a fundamental gap in understanding how the human brain builds coherent auditory perceptions—like recognising a voice or a musical note—from raw sound waves. Current models of auditory processing rely heavily on animal studies, but it remains unclear whether the macaque monkey, the standard animal model, processes sound in the same way humans do. The project will directly compare neural activity in humans and macaques using the same stimuli and the same analytical tools, including direct brain recordings from neurosurgical patients and non-invasive magnetoencephalography and fMRI. Dynamic causal modelling will then test competing theories of how cortical regions communicate during normal perception and during tinnitus, the phantom perception of sound. If successful, this work will clarify which aspects of auditory perception can be reliably studied in macaques and which require human data. The findings could eventually inform more targeted treatments for tinnitus and for patients with temporal lobe lesions who struggle to process sound objects. However, the primary aim is fundamental: to establish a rigorous, cross-species account of how the cortex turns vibrations into meaningful sound.