Disclosed are apparatus and methods that employ a modified version of a computational model of the human peripheral and central auditory system, and that provide for automatic pattern recognition using category dependent feature selection. The validity of the output of the model is examined by deriving feature vectors from the dimension expanded cortical response of the central auditory system for use in a conventional phoneme recognition task. In addition, the cortical response may be a place-coded data set where sounds are categorized according to the regions containing their most distinguishing features. This provides for a novel category-dependent feature selection apparatus and methods in which this mechanism may be utilized to better simulate robust human pattern (speech) recognition.