Temporal Lobe · Structure
Primary Auditory Cortex
Air pressure becomes music here.
The auditory cortex on the upper temporal lobe is arranged by pitch, low tones at one end and high tones at the other, like a piano keyboard folded into tissue.
What it does
- Detecting pitch, volume, and timing
- Separating speech from background noise
- Locating where a sound came from
In the real world
Cochlear implants
Implants send electrical pulses along the pitch map of the hearing pathway, and children's auditory cortex learns to interpret them as speech.