Central Auditory Processing (CAP) assumes a set of mechanisms and processes carried out by pathways and neuronal centres, enabling the human sound localization and lateralization, auditory discrimination, auditory pattern recognition, temporal resolution, temporal masking, temporal integration, temporal ordering, auditory performance in competing acoustic signals (including dichotic listening), and auditory performance with degraded acoustic signals. According to the most heuristic model of CAP, this type of processing is defined as a series of processes that occur in time and enable acoustic and metacognitive analyses skills of the sound.
The first years of life are crucial to the proper development of those processes, depending on brain maturation and cerebral organization relatively, only developed in humans, parallel to a ubiquitous neuroplasticity, allowing corrections and improvements during the brain growth and cognitive development. The sound transformed into nervous impulse in the cochlea is transmitted by the VIII cranial pair to the cochlear nuclei in the brainstem, and from here to the central auditory nervous system.
Last date updated on January, 2025
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