Characterizing Auditory Receptive Fields

In this issue of Neuron, two papers by Atencio et al. and Nagel and Doupe adapt new computational methods to map the spectrotemporal response fields of neurons in the auditory cortex. The papers take different but complementary approaches to apply theoretical techniques to classical methods of receptive field mapping and, in doing so, provide exciting new insights into the way in which sounds are processed in the auditory cortex.