Primary Auditory Cortex

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The primary auditory cortex is the region of the brain that is responsible for processing of auditory (sound) information. It is located on the temporal lobe, and performs the basics of hearing; pitch and volume. As with other primary sensory cortical areas, auditory sensations reach perception only if received and processed by a cortical area. Evidence for this comes from lesion studies in human patients who have sustained damage to cortical areas through tumors or strokes, or from animal experiments in which cortical areas were deactivated by cooling or locally applied drug treatment. Damage to the Primary Auditory Cortex in humans leads to a loss of any 'awareness' of sound, but an ability to react reflexively to sounds remains as there is a great deal of subcortical processing in the auditory brainstem and midbrain.