Neural Coding and Perception of Sound
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this graduate-level course on how the auditory system detects, localizes, and recognizes sound. Lectures cover the neural structures and circuitry involved, including temporal coding, neural maps, feature detectors, and the learning and plasticity mechanisms that shape auditory processing. Theme discussions apply these principles to specific problems: auditory masking, sound localization, musical pitch perception, speech coding, and cochlear implants. The course connects cellular and circuit-level mechanisms to behavioral performance, showing how signal transformations in the ear and brainstem translate into what listeners actually perceive. Materials include lecture notes and readings from MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences department, freely available online with no certificate offered. Best suited to students with prior background in neuroscience or sensory physiology.