Understanding human hearing is not only a scientific challenge but also a problem of growing social and political importance, given the steadily increasing numbers of people with hearing deficits or even deafness. This book is about the highest level of hearing in humans and other mammals. It brings together studies of both humans and animals thereby giving a more profound understanding of the concepts, approaches, techniques, and knowledge of the auditory cortex. All of the most up-to-date procedures of non-invasive imaging are employed in the research that is described.

Understanding human hearing is not only a scientific challenge but also a problem of growing social and political importance, given the steadily increasing numbers of people with hearing deficits or even deafness. This book is about the highest level of hearing in humans and other mammals. It brings together studies of both humans and animals thereby giving a more profound understanding of the concepts, approaches, techniques, and knowledge of the auditory cortex. All of the most up-to-date procedures of non-invasive imaging are employed in the research that is described.

In recent years, revolutionary technical advances have permitted neuroscientists to map the functioning of the brain in exquisite detail. Of interest are the new techniques that visually display cell energy metabolism which is coupled to functional brain activity in behaving animals. This is the first book dealing with the application of 2-deoxyglucose and related metabolic mapping techniques for brain imaging of behavioral and learning functions. Quantitative autoradiographic techniques based on the use of exogenous markers include radiolabeled glucose and its analogs, especially 2-deoxyglucose and fluorodeoxyglucose. Other mapping techniques are based on the histochemical staining of endogenous metabolic markers such as cytochrome oxidase, as well as immunohistochemistry for expression of c-fos genes. In spite of the great potential capabilities of the new imaging techniques, relatively few neuroscientists are using this approach to study brain functions related to behavior. There is a need to review state-of-the-art applications of these methods in behavioral neuroscience, and to formulate recommendations for future research in this area. This book is intended to fulfill these needs by bringing together leading neuroscientists using metabolic mapping approaches to elucidate brain mechanisms of behavior. Discussions are not limited to one animal species, but they cover a broad range of vertebrates with unique behavioral capabilities.

Of the three organizers of this NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "Neocortex: Onto geny and Phylogeny," one derived most of his knowledge about neocortex from studies on birds, another had never studied any animal but the cat and could probably recognize not more than ten animal species, and the third had very limited experience with mountaineering. They had in common the belief that evolutionary thinking permeates what biologists do, but that evolution of species and structures cannot be directly experimentally addressed. Although the fossil record can provide some major insights, the inroad to the evolution of the brain is indirect, via comparative anatomy and developmental biology. By identifying similarities and differences between brain structures in the species at hand, comparative anatomy generates hypotheses of evolutionary transformations. By understanding the rules of morphological transformation, developmental biology can, in principle, estimate the likelihood that a given transformation may have actually occurred. The meeting was a way to check if this notion is viable, by gathering together scientists from these two fields. Standing, left to right: F. Ebner, V. Caviness, M. Weisskopf, B. Fritszch, N. Swindale, J. Walter, H. Karten, J. Pettigrew, E. Welker, M. Cynader, D. Frost, L. Lopez-Mascaraque, P. Katz, H. Jerison, E. Soriano, Mayor of Alagna, Dr. G. Guglielmina, and associate, H. Van der Loos, B. Finlay, H. Scheich, C. Ruela. Seated: S. Pallas, T. Lohmann, J. De Carlos, F. Valverde, G. Innocenti, M. Diamond v "Gathering" does not accurately describe what really happened."

Of the three organizers of this NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "Neocortex: Onto geny and Phylogeny," one derived most of his knowledge about neocortex from studies on birds, another had never studied any animal but the cat and could probably recognize not more than ten animal species, and the third had very limited experience with mountaineering. They had in common the belief that evolutionary thinking permeates what biologists do, but that evolution of species and structures cannot be directly experimentally addressed. Although the fossil record can provide some major insights, the inroad to the evolution of the brain is indirect, via comparative anatomy and developmental biology. By identifying similarities and differences between brain structures in the species at hand, comparative anatomy generates hypotheses of evolutionary transformations. By understanding the rules of morphological transformation, developmental biology can, in principle, estimate the likelihood that a given transformation may have actually occurred. The meeting was a way to check if this notion is viable, by gathering together scientists from these two fields. Standing, left to right: F. Ebner, V. Caviness, M. Weisskopf, B. Fritszch, N. Swindale, J. Walter, H. Karten, J. Pettigrew, E. Welker, M. Cynader, D. Frost, L. Lopez-Mascaraque, P. Katz, H. Jerison, E. Soriano, Mayor of Alagna, Dr. G. Guglielmina, and associate, H. Van der Loos, B. Finlay, H. Scheich, C. Ruela. Seated: S. Pallas, T. Lohmann, J. De Carlos, F. Valverde, G. Innocenti, M. Diamond v "Gathering" does not accurately describe what really happened."

Ever since the behavioral work of Lissrnann (1958), who showed that the weak electric discharges of some families of fish (hitherto considered useless for prey capture or for scaring away enemies) are part of a strange sensory system, these fish have attracted attention from biologists. The subsequent discovery of the electroreceptors in the skin of gymnotids and mormyrids (Bullock et al. 1961; Fessard and Szabo 1961) and the evidence that the ampullae of Lorenzini of nonelectric sharks and rays are also electro- receptors (Digkgraaf and Kalmijn 1962) was a start for a lively branch of physiological, anatomical, and behavioral research. Many fmdings of general importance for these fields have made the case to which extremes the performance of the central and peri- pheral nervous systems can be driven. Among those fmdings is the temporal accuracy of the pacemaker of some high-frequency fish which controls the electric organ, pro- bably the most accurate biological clock (coefficient of variation < 0. 0 1 %, Bullock 1982). The functional analysis of the pacemaker cells and their axons has established most of our knowledge on electrotonic synapses, the alternative to chemical synapses (Bennett et al. 1967), and of the implications of axonal delay lines for achieving extreme synchrony of parallel inputs to postsynaptic elements (Bennett 1972; Bruns 1971).

o. D. CREUTZFELDT, Max-Planck-Institut fUr Biophysikalische Chern ie, D-3400 G6ttingen, FRG In the name of the European Brain and Behaviour Society (EBBS) and the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, I welcome you to this workshop on Hearing Mechanisms and Speech. It is the aim of EBBS, to tackle brain mechanisms of complex behavioral performances. Language is certainly a complex - haviour, and understanding of language as well. Through language an individual is able to express the internal p- cesses within his brain in symbols of this experience and communicate them to others. This implies also the description of the world in which we live in as far as this world induces, through the sensory organs, activities in our brains. This symbolical representation of the world is, in itself, a real world to which our brain relates itself, in creating and in understanding it (Creutzfeldt, 1979). Therefore, any s- cific language influences thinking and broader aspects of behaviour, and this may explain some of the differences as found between language populations (Herder, 1772iHumboldt, 1836). In as much as the function of language is a symbolical rep- sentation of reality, it must be able to describe this reality, sufficiently and generally. In so far, the rules to which any XIII language is subjected, are dictated by the reality to which we relate ourself through language. These rules are general, and therefore general rules or a universal grammar may be generated, common to all languages (Chomsky, 1965).