How feedforward and feedback signals shape auditory perception remains unknown

Evidence

Of course, several fundamental questions remain. First, as alluded to above, understanding how feedforward versus feedback information contributes to neural correlates of perceptual judgments remains an open question. Second, the degree to which different types of auditory judgements differentially engage different components of the ventral pathway has yet to be fully articulated. A third question is to identify how the different computational processes (e.g., perceptual grouping, attention, decision-making, and categorization) that underlie auditory perception interact with one another. For example, it remains an open issue as to whether and how attention differentially modulates neural correlates of auditory perception at different hierarchical levels of the ventral auditory pathway (e.g., A1 versus AL) (Atiani et al. 2014 ). Another example is to identify the potential interactions between auditory perceptual grouping and decision-making. Finally, it is important to identify the manner by which the dorsal and ventral auditory pathways interact in order to form a consistent and coherent representation of the auditory scene. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 4898

Categorization

• QUESTION: The cited open questions — attention interacting with hierarchy, perceptual grouping with decision-making, dorsal-ventral integration — are research directions worth tracking for the reader’s understanding of hearing physiology.