Our hearing system has the ability to tune our attention to a certain sound/voice wh-ile filtering out theunwanted noise. There are several cues which animals and human-suse in this tuning process: thespectrum，the direction，the context of the sound/v-oice，and the visual information related to thesound/voice. The auditory cortex mus-t be involved in judging the signal from noise and integratingthe visual informatio-n. On the other hand，it is desirable to place the filter at the auditory pathway asearlier as possible from the point view of information theory. The massive corticofugal projectionswould answer the above requirements. The major part of corticofugal system in the auditory system is the corticothalamic projections involving the thalam-ic reticular nucleus.In the seminar，we are going（1) to review the auditory corticothalamic system: its anatomy andphysiology,（2) to focus on our recent studies abou-t the corticofugal modulation by using extracelluarrecording，intracellular recordi-ng，and histochemical techniques,（3) finally to discuss the functionalimplication of the corticothalamic modulation。
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