Development, Plasticity, and Learning in the Auditory System

Abstract

The human auditory system undergoes dramatic improvement in sensitivity between the onset of function in the last trimester of gestation and the end of the first postnatal year. These early limitations may constrain various aspects of sound discrimination and learning in young infants. Despite these limitations, the newborn is capable of rapid learning of suprathreshold auditory stimuli, rudimentary localization of sound, and elementary processing of complex auditory patterns such as speech. This chapter reviews these basic auditory capacities, examining how various brain mechanisms process both simple and complex sounds, and how these processing mechanisms are elaborated by maturation and experience.