Speech sound representation, perception, and plasticity: A neurophysiologic perspective

Historically, auditory research has focused predominately upon how relatively simple acoustic signals are represented in the neuronal responses of the auditory periphery. However, in order to understand the neurophysiology underlying speech perception, the ultimate objective is to discover how speech sounds are represented in the central auditory system and to relate that representation to the perception of speech as a meaningful acoustic signal. This paper reviews three areas that pertain to the central auditory representation of speech: (1) the differences in neural representation of speech sounds at different levels of the auditory system; (2) the relation between the representation of sound in the auditory pathway and the perception/misperception of speech, and (3) the training-related plasticity of speech sound neural representation and speech perception.