Cortical Computational Maps Control Auditory Perception

Riquimaroux, Hiroshi; Gaioni, Stephen J.; Suga, Nobuo

doi:10.1126/science.1990432

Cited by 106 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Although the auditory cortex may simply reflect properties of periodicity coding generated in the midbrain, the auditory cortex is crucial for relating an auditory representation to behavior (Heffner and Heffner, 1990;Riquimaroux et al, 1991;Smith et al, 2004). It has been suggested that the role of the auditory cortex might be to organize sound features already extracted by lower levels into auditory objects (Nelken, 2004).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is especially interesting to directly relate neural processing to behavioral performance, an attempt that has only been made a few times in bats (Riquimaroux et al, 1991(Riquimaroux et al, , 1992. Thus, two questions are pursued here: (1) what are the behavioral thresholds for auditory-object discrimination based on IR roughness in P. discolor and (2) is there an auditory cortical correlate of the behavioral performance?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Neural Correlate of Stochastic Echo Imaging

Firzlaff¹,

Schörnich²,

Hoffmann

et al. 2006

J. Neurosci.

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Bats quickly navigate through a highly structured environment relying on echolocation. Large natural objects in the environment, like bushes or trees, produce complex stochastic echoes, which can be characterized by the echo roughness. Previous work has shown that bats can use echo roughness to classify the stochastic properties of natural objects. This study provides both psychophysical and electrophysiological data to identify a neural correlate of statistical echo analysis in the bat Phyllostomus discolor. Psychophysical results show that the bats require a fixed minimum roughness of 2.5 (in units of base 10 logarithm of the stimulus fourth moment) for roughness discrimination. Electrophysiological results reveal a subpopulation of 15 of 94 recorded cortical units, located in an anterior region of auditory cortex, whose rate responses changed significantly with echo roughness. It is shown that the behavioral ability to discriminate differences in the statistics of complex echoes can be quantitatively predicted by the neural responses of this subpopulation of auditorycortical neurons.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Neural Correlate of Stochastic Echo Imaging

Firzlaff¹,

Schörnich²,

Hoffmann

et al. 2006

J. Neurosci.

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show abstract

“…The FM/FM area was proven to be instrumental for discriminating between echo delays during a fear conditioning task 8 . However, the mechanisms by which this area-and the map it contains-yields a representation of acoustic scenes during echolocation remains largely unknown.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cortical delay-tuned neurons of the species Pteronotus parnellii, Pteronotus quadridens, Carollia perspicillata and Rhinolophus rouxi are confined to a specialized region in the dorsal auditory cortex defined as the frequencymodulated (FM)/FM processing area [4][5][6][7] . Some empirical evidence suggests that the FM/FM area has a role in the bat's perception of echo delay 8 .…”

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confidence: 99%

Blurry topography for precise target-distance computations in the auditory cortex of echolocating bats

et al. 2013

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Echolocating bats use the time from biosonar pulse emission to the arrival of echo (defined as echo delay) to calculate the space depth of targets. In the dorsal auditory cortex of several species, neurons that encode increasing echo delays are organized rostrocaudally in a topographic arrangement defined as chronotopy. Precise chronotopy could be important for precise target-distance computations. Here we show that in the cortex of three echolocating bat species (Pteronotus quadridens, Pteronotus parnellii and Carollia perspicillata), chronotopy is not precise but blurry. In all three species, neurons throughout the chronotopic map are driven by short echo delays that indicate the presence of close targets and the robustness of map organization depends on the parameter of the receptive field used to characterize neuronal tuning. The timing of cortical responses (latency and duration) provides a binding code that could be important for assembling acoustic scenes using echo delay information from objects with different space depths.

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“…Neurons responding to different echo delays are chronotopically arranged so that a continuous representation of echo delay time is created on the cortical surface 6,10 . For PP, it has been demonstrated that delay-tuned neurons are crucial for temporal discrimination behaviour 11 .…”

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confidence: 99%

Auditory cortex of newborn bats is prewired for echolocation

et al. 2012

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neuronal computation of object distance from echo delay is an essential task that echolocating bats must master for spatial orientation and the capture of prey. In the dorsal auditory cortex of bats, neurons specifically respond to combinations of short frequency-modulated components of emitted call and delayed echo. These delay-tuned neurons are thought to serve in target range calculation. It is unknown whether neuronal correlates of active space perception are established by experience-dependent plasticity or by innate mechanisms. Here we demonstrate that in the first postnatal week, before onset of echolocation and flight, dorsal auditory cortex already contains functional circuits that calculate distance from the temporal separation of a simulated pulse and echo. This innate cortical implementation of a purely computational processing mechanism for sonar ranging should enhance survival of juvenile bats when they first engage in active echolocation behaviour and flight.

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Cortical Computational Maps Control Auditory Perception

Cited by 106 publications

References 24 publications

A Neural Correlate of Stochastic Echo Imaging

A Neural Correlate of Stochastic Echo Imaging

Blurry topography for precise target-distance computations in the auditory cortex of echolocating bats

Auditory cortex of newborn bats is prewired for echolocation

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