Auditory Pathways: How the Brain Processes Sound
When the brain receives electrical signals from the cochlea, it uses auditory neural pathways – a series of neurons (brain cells) linked together that send the electrical signals to different regions of the brain to process the sound’s meaning and location. As the brain listens to more inputs, the neural pathways strengthen, allowing the brain to process information with more efficiency.
Think of neural pathways like a hiking trail (Figure 5). The first time you hike the trail, it is slow and chaotic: you have to use a map, you take a wrong turn, and the unused path means there are roots and rocks you have to remove to make progress. The first trial run is slow and inefficient. But you are learning and absorbing all kinds of new scenery and hiking techniques, finding the best way to hike the path.
As you hike the trail over and over again, you begin to remember the path and no longer have to look at a map, and the obstacles you once faced have either been removed or you know routes around them. Every time you hike the trail, you get faster and faster until it is effortless. Auditory neural pathways develop through repeated exposure to different sounds, enabling the brain to understand the input without much effort.
Figure 5: Neural pathways explained through an analogy of a hiking trail: with repeated use of auditory pathways, the pathway is more efficient.
As infants, our brains are learning to process input of environmental sounds and determine what they mean. As infants grow older, these pathways are used more and more, allowing for faster and more accurate processing of hearing. Studies have shown that around the age of 5 years, the majority of our hearing pathways are developed. However, our lab has found evidence that binaural hearing is refined from ages 5-13 (Abdi et al., 2024)
It is important to nurture these auditory pathways to ensure proper development. Hearing devices like cochlear implants and hearing aids are great ways to restore levels of auditory input, stimulating the development of the pathways.