Springer Plasticity and Signal Representation in the Auditory System

The symposium that has provided the basis for this book, "Plasticity of the Central Auditory System and Processing of Complex Acoustic Signals" was held in Prague on July 7-10, 2003. This is the fourth in a series of seminal meetings summarizing the state of development of auditory system neuroscience that has been organized in that great world city. Books that have resulted from these meetings represent important benchmarks for auditory neuroscience over the past 25 years. A 1980 meeting, "Neuronal Mechanisms of Hearing" hosted the most distinguished hearing researchers focusing on underlying brain processes from this era. It resulted in a highly influential and widely subscribed and cited proceedings co-edited by professor Lindsay Aitkin. The subject of the 1987 meeting was the "Auditory Pathway - Structure and Function". It again resulted in another important update of hearing science research in a widely referenced book - edited by the late Bruce Masterton. While the original plan was to hold a meeting summarizing the state of auditory system neuroscience every 7 years, historical events connected with the disintegration of the Soviet Empire and return of freedom to Czechoslovakia resulted in an unavoidable delay of what was planned to be a 1994 meeting. It wasn't until 1996 that we were able to meet for the third time in Prague, at that time to review "Acoustical Signal Processing in the Central Auditory System". From the Back Cover This volume summarizes the state of development of auditory system neuroscience. This field is in an era of remarkable progress, particularly in the field of plasticity of the auditory system. New advances in understanding auditory system plasticity, based substantially on a large and growing body of results from animal experiments, are related to innumerable new insights into the physiology and pathology of speech and music perception and production generated by behavioral studies, and from the application of modern brain imaging techniques. We are living in an especially exciting period of research, marked by an almost astounding rate of advance in the development of our understanding of the hearing brain. The extraordinary series of reports published in this book document this rapid, further advance.