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The midbrain (mesencephalon) consists of the tectum, tegmentum, substantia nigra, red nucleus, inferior and superior colliculi and the cerebral aqueduct. It is the part of the brain that regulates eye movement, sleep, arousal and relays sensory and motor information to other brain areas.
Using direct intracranial recordings and modern speech AI models, Li and colleagues show representational and computational similarities between deep neural networks for self-supervised speech learning and the human auditory pathway.
In the primary auditory cortex, visual or tactile stimuli can modulate acoustically-driven activity. Here, the authors show that circuits linking the primary somatosensory cortex to both the auditory midbrain and thalamus allow tactile inputs to modulate auditory thalamocortical processing.
Spontaneous activity in the developing auditory system is maintained by a homeostatic mechanism and is important for cochlear neuron subtype specification.
