This book is designed to meet the needs of advanced undergraduates and graduate students from a range of disciplines including neurobiology, psychology and speech sciences. The description of the book as a new analysis and synthesis is inappropriate as the book covers established areas. Basic physiological mechanisms of sound representation and psychological aspects of hearing are discussed with the emphasis on the latter. The book is therefore in a niche that includes physiological texts such as those by Pickles, and the well-established psychoacoustic texts by Moore.