Cargando…
Effect of Stimulus-Dependent Spike Timing on Population Coding of Sound Location in the Owl’s Auditory Midbrain
In the auditory system, the spectrotemporal structure of acoustic signals determines the temporal pattern of spikes. Here, we investigated this effect in neurons of the barn owl’s auditory midbrain (Tyto furcata) that are selective for auditory space and whether it can influence the coding of sound...
Autores principales: | , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Society for Neuroscience
2020
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7189487/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32188709 http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0244-19.2020 |
_version_ | 1783527506550194176 |
---|---|
author | Beckert, M. V. Fischer, B. J. Pena, J. L. |
author_facet | Beckert, M. V. Fischer, B. J. Pena, J. L. |
author_sort | Beckert, M. V. |
collection | PubMed |
description | In the auditory system, the spectrotemporal structure of acoustic signals determines the temporal pattern of spikes. Here, we investigated this effect in neurons of the barn owl’s auditory midbrain (Tyto furcata) that are selective for auditory space and whether it can influence the coding of sound direction. We found that in the nucleus where neurons first become selective to combinations of sound localization cues, reproducibility of spike trains across repeated trials of identical sounds, a metric of across-trial temporal fidelity of spiking patterns evoked by a stimulus, was maximal at the sound direction that elicited the highest firing rate. We then tested the hypothesis that this stimulus-dependent patterning resulted in rate co-modulation of cells with similar frequency and spatial selectivity, driving stimulus-dependent synchrony of population responses. Tetrodes were used to simultaneously record multiple nearby units in the optic tectum (OT), where auditory space is topographically represented. While spiking of neurons in OT showed lower reproducibility across trials compared with upstream nuclei, spike-time synchrony between nearby OT neurons was highest for sounds at their preferred direction. A model of the midbrain circuit explained the relationship between stimulus-dependent reproducibility and synchrony, and demonstrated that this effect can improve the decoding of sound location from the OT output. Thus, stimulus-dependent spiking patterns in the auditory midbrain can have an effect on spatial coding. This study reports a functional connection between spike patterning elicited by spectrotemporal features of a sound and the coding of its location. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7189487 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Society for Neuroscience |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-71894872020-04-29 Effect of Stimulus-Dependent Spike Timing on Population Coding of Sound Location in the Owl’s Auditory Midbrain Beckert, M. V. Fischer, B. J. Pena, J. L. eNeuro Research Article: New Research In the auditory system, the spectrotemporal structure of acoustic signals determines the temporal pattern of spikes. Here, we investigated this effect in neurons of the barn owl’s auditory midbrain (Tyto furcata) that are selective for auditory space and whether it can influence the coding of sound direction. We found that in the nucleus where neurons first become selective to combinations of sound localization cues, reproducibility of spike trains across repeated trials of identical sounds, a metric of across-trial temporal fidelity of spiking patterns evoked by a stimulus, was maximal at the sound direction that elicited the highest firing rate. We then tested the hypothesis that this stimulus-dependent patterning resulted in rate co-modulation of cells with similar frequency and spatial selectivity, driving stimulus-dependent synchrony of population responses. Tetrodes were used to simultaneously record multiple nearby units in the optic tectum (OT), where auditory space is topographically represented. While spiking of neurons in OT showed lower reproducibility across trials compared with upstream nuclei, spike-time synchrony between nearby OT neurons was highest for sounds at their preferred direction. A model of the midbrain circuit explained the relationship between stimulus-dependent reproducibility and synchrony, and demonstrated that this effect can improve the decoding of sound location from the OT output. Thus, stimulus-dependent spiking patterns in the auditory midbrain can have an effect on spatial coding. This study reports a functional connection between spike patterning elicited by spectrotemporal features of a sound and the coding of its location. Society for Neuroscience 2020-04-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7189487/ /pubmed/32188709 http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0244-19.2020 Text en Copyright © 2020 Beckert et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed. |
spellingShingle | Research Article: New Research Beckert, M. V. Fischer, B. J. Pena, J. L. Effect of Stimulus-Dependent Spike Timing on Population Coding of Sound Location in the Owl’s Auditory Midbrain |
title | Effect of Stimulus-Dependent Spike Timing on Population Coding of Sound Location in the Owl’s Auditory Midbrain |
title_full | Effect of Stimulus-Dependent Spike Timing on Population Coding of Sound Location in the Owl’s Auditory Midbrain |
title_fullStr | Effect of Stimulus-Dependent Spike Timing on Population Coding of Sound Location in the Owl’s Auditory Midbrain |
title_full_unstemmed | Effect of Stimulus-Dependent Spike Timing on Population Coding of Sound Location in the Owl’s Auditory Midbrain |
title_short | Effect of Stimulus-Dependent Spike Timing on Population Coding of Sound Location in the Owl’s Auditory Midbrain |
title_sort | effect of stimulus-dependent spike timing on population coding of sound location in the owl’s auditory midbrain |
topic | Research Article: New Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7189487/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32188709 http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0244-19.2020 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT beckertmv effectofstimulusdependentspiketimingonpopulationcodingofsoundlocationintheowlsauditorymidbrain AT fischerbj effectofstimulusdependentspiketimingonpopulationcodingofsoundlocationintheowlsauditorymidbrain AT penajl effectofstimulusdependentspiketimingonpopulationcodingofsoundlocationintheowlsauditorymidbrain |