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The midbrain (mesencephalon) consists of the tectum, tegmentum, substantia nigra, red nucleus, inferior and superior colliculi and the cerebral aqueduct. It is the part of the brain that regulates eye movement, sleep, arousal and relays sensory and motor information to other brain areas.
Anatomical overlap of respective brain regions suggests a joint network for attention and eye movements. Here, the authors show that gaze aligns with the acoustics of attended natural speech and differentiates between a target and a distractor in a cocktail party scenario.
Using direct intracranial recordings and modern speech AI models, Li and colleagues show representational and computational similarities between deep neural networks for self-supervised speech learning and the human auditory pathway.
Spontaneous activity in the developing auditory system is maintained by a homeostatic mechanism and is important for cochlear neuron subtype specification.