Discuss the major brain structures involved in hearing analysis/comprehension. Explain for each major structure what problems in hearing and/or analysis/comprehension would arise if they were damaged. .
The central auditory system has several brain stem nuclei: cochlear nuclei, superior olivary complexes, and inferior nuclei (Carlson & Carlson, 2012). The medial geniculate nucleus communicates auditory information to the primary auditory cortex on the medial surface of the temporal lobe (Carlson & Carlson, 2012). The primary auditory cortex has three tonotopic representations of auditory information and is surrounded by the belt region and the parabelt region. .
The auditory association cortex is organized into streams that analyze the nature of sounds (and where are they coming from). In order to identify the source of the sounds, the auditory system must identify the continually changing patterns of activity established for the axons in the cochlear nerve (Carlson & Carlson, 2012). The ventral stream in involved in the analysis of the sound, the dorsal stream in involved in perception of its location. Localized lesions of the auditory association cortex can damage people's ability to recognize environmental sounds, sound location, and sound movement (Carlson & Carlson, 2012). Perception of pitch activates regions of the superior temporal gyrus rostral and lateral to the primary auditory cortex. Right hemisphere of the brain in perception of the underlying beat of music and the specific rhythmic patterns of musical composition. Individuals who suffer from medial temporal lobe damage have a difficulty in remembering visual stimuli. This happens because of the inability to connect the visual stimuli perceived to the visual processing and interpretation centers (Pertzov, Miller, Gorgoraptis, Caine, Schott, Butler, & Husain, 2013). The most common symptom of inferior temporal lobe damage involves deficiency in the identification of familiar objects, which is called visual agnosia.
