Believing is hearing is believing

Auditory consciousness encompasses familiar experiences like hearing and imagining sounds, as well as rarer ones like tinnitus and hearing voices. This chapter presents a simplified model of the auditory system that distinguishes bottom-up signals from lower pathways and top-down influences from higher evaluative mechanisms. Using this model, auditory perception, hallucinations, and illusions are explained as minor variations from normal functioning. Neuroimaging and electrophysiological correlates are discussed, highlighting their current inability to qualitatively differentiate conscious from unconscious auditory processes, and suggesting future approaches to address this limitation.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Auditory consciousness takes many forms. Some of these, such as auditory perception and imagination, are familiar to nearly all people, which others, such as tinnitus or hearing voices, are rare and unfamiliar to most. This chapter proposes a simplified conceptual model of the auditory system, involving bottom-up influences from the lower auditory pathways and top-down influences from higher evaluative mechanisms. This model is used to explain auditory perception, hallucinations and illusions based, for each phenomenon, on only minor variations from the normally functioning system. Neuroimaging and electrophysiological correlates of these processes are discussed, along with their inability to qualitatively differentiate conscious from unconscious processes, and how we might approach this problem in future.