All animals face the essential task of extracting biologically meaningful sensory information
from the 'noisy'backdrop of their environments. Here, we examine mechanisms used by …

Intraspecific acoustic communication requires filtering processes and feature detectors in the
auditory pathway of the receiver for the recognition of species-specific signals. Insects like …

From human language to birdsong and the chirps of insects, acoustic communication is
based on amplitude and frequency modulation of sound signals. Whereas frequency …

Because evolution mostly acts over millions of years, the intermediate steps leading to a
functional sensory system remain enigmatic [1–3]. Accordingly, there is an ongoing debate …

Sound discrimination is essential in many species for communicating and foraging. Bats, for
example, use sounds for echolocation and communication. In the bat auditory cortex there …

In speech, listeners extract continuously-varying spectrotemporal cues from the acoustic
signal to perceive discrete phonetic categories. Spectral cues are spatially encoded in the …

The brains of odontocetes (toothed whales) look grossly different from their terrestrial
relatives. Because of their adaptation to the aquatic environment and their reliance on …

Precise temporal coding is necessary for proper acoustic analysis. However, at cortical level,
forward suppression appears to limit the ability of neurons to extract temporal information …

For the purpose of orientation, echolocating bats emit highly repetitive and spatially directed
sonar calls. Echoes arising from call reflections are used to create an acoustic image of the …

Echolocation behavior, a navigation strategy based on acoustic signals, allows scientists to
explore neural processing of behaviorally relevant stimuli. For the purpose of orientation …