摘要: A listener’s perception of the world sound is but an abstraction physical reality. It determined initially by linear acoustic transformation performed head, pinnae and external ear canals, followed in turn nonlinear mechanoelectric transduction bilaterally placed receptor organs Corti ever changing spatio-temporal discharge patterns ensembles first-order afferent fibers auditory nerve. Within central system, which faces only indirectly through this filtered fluctuating input, incoming information encoded trains all-or-none action potentials received, transformed, then redistributed over parallel pathways to higher centers brain. Sound involves a number mechanisms operating concert, these form recurrent themes that run chapters follow. They include sensory coding, temporal spatial transformation, divergent convergent projection, serial processing, localization function neuronal plasticity. These are related hearing ways still not fully understood, although all them have been thought about, discussed, studied one or another for century more.