The Lateral Lemniscus carries the input and the Reticular formation alerts the Cerebrum that it is coming.
These neural pathways which carry this auditory input up the sides of the brainstem are called the Lateral Lemniscus. There is one more wrinkle in the process of hearing, however.
There is another neural network which is located in the core of the brain stem, called the Reticular Formation. This network does many things, and one of them is to alert the Cerbral Cortex when information is incoming from the transducer.
If the Cerebral Cortex is not alerted, the information will still arrive but it will not be processed. The end result will be that we will not hear the sounds that have been transduced.
I suspect this alerting mechanism is important to the perceptual process also in triggering the brain to prepare for the input. We will discuss this next in the topic on Perception.
If all this was jargon, click on the notes below for a more simplified version.
EXIT to the Main Menu
NOTES: See a simplified version of this lecture that Dr. Hall used at USC (Look-out, it takes a long time to load).
NOTES: Here is perhaps more than you might want to know about the Reticular Formation.