Auditory system articles from across Nature Portfolio

To understand speech, our brains have to learn the different types of sounds that constitute words, including syllables, stress patterns and smaller sound elements, such as phonetic categories. Here, the authors provide evidence that at 7 months, the infant brain learns reliably to detect invariant phonetic categories.

Auditory responses in zebra finches exposed to a novel canary environment show a surprising transient reversal of typical brain lateralization together with improved discrimination of canary vocalizations, thereby suggesting that lateralization is not fixed, but dynamically regulated.

Schizophrenia patients are impaired in attenuating responses to self-generated sensory input. Here, the authors reveal the same sensory deficit and reduced corollary discharge signaling in mice carrying a major genetic risk factor for schizophrenia.

A study dissects the neural circuit through which pup cries induce oxytocin release and maternal behaviour in mice.

Saccades can systematically modulate neural activity in multiple auditory brain regions in humans.

The ability to be woken from deep sleep by a sound (such as an alarm) is shown to be mediated by a specialized glutamatergic brainstem–mediodorsal thalamic pathway.

Gastrin-releasing peptide (GRP) signalling regulates vasoactive-intestinal peptide (VIP)-expressing cortical cells in a disinhibitory microcircuit that modulates a cortex-dependent behaviour.