Figure 4.

Schematic diagram of the auditory pathway, showing the major stations and projections that constitute the lemniscal and nonlemniscal pathways. Note that divisions in subcortical nuclei are well preserved across species, while AC fields vary markedly (Malmierca & Hackett, 2010). As a rule of thumb, lemniscal tonotopic laminae tend to project to their analogous lamina in the next lemniscal division and receive few cortical projections, shaping a sort of straightforward pathway to the cortex. Conversely, nonlemniscal divisions tend to project mostly to other nonlemniscal divisions and receive dense cortical projections, shaping a loop-like connectivity network ideal for hosting a generative mechanism of hierarchical inference (Figure 1(d)).

AC = auditory cortex; CNIC = central nucleus of the inferior colliculus; DCIC = dorsal cortex of the inferior colliculus; IC = inferior colliculus; LCIC = lateral cortex of the inferior colliculus; MGB = medial geniculate body of the thalamus; MGD = dorsal division of the MGB; MDM = medial division of the MGB; MGV = ventral division of the MGB; RCIC = rostral cortex of the inferior colliculus. Adapted from Malmierca et al. (2015).