Deviance sensitivity in the auditory cortex of freely moving rats

Abstract

Deviance sensitivity is the specific response to a surprising stimulus, one that violates expectations set by the past stimulation stream. In audition, deviance sensitivity is often conflated with stimulus-specific adaptation (SSA), the decrease in responses to a common stimulus that only partially generalizes to other, rare stimuli. SSA is usually measured using oddball sequences, where a common (standard) tone and a rare (deviant) tone are randomly intermixed. However, the larger responses to a tone when deviant does not necessarily represent deviance sensitivity. Deviance sensitivity is commonly tested using a control sequence in which many different tones serve as the standard, eliminating the expectations set by the standard ('deviant among many standards'). When the response to a tone when deviant (against a single standard) is larger than the responses to the same tone in the control sequence, it is concluded that true deviance sensitivity occurs. In primary auditory cortex of anesthetized rats, responses to deviants and to the same tones in the control condition are comparable in size. We recorded local field potentials and multiunit activity from the auditory cortex of awake, freely moving rats, implanted with 32-channel drivable microelectrode arrays and using telemetry. We observed highly significant SSA in the awake state. Moreover, the responses to a tone when deviant were significantly larger than the responses to the same tone in the control condition. These results establish the presence of true deviance sensitivity in primary auditory cortex in awake rats.

Cortical Microcircuit Mechanisms of Mismatch Negativity and Its Underlying Subcomponents

“…While organisms must be able to undergo SSA, they must also be able to quickly detect changes that differ from what has recently been experienced (or what can thereby be predicted), as it may signal salient information. This ability of neurons and neural systems to detect abrupt, unexpected variation from the constant, expected sensory milieu (or a set of presented stimuli) is known as deviance detection (DD) and typically involves an increase in firing responses (Malmierca et al, 2009;Antunes et al, 2010;Hamm and Yuste, 2016;Musall et al, 2017;Parras et al, 2017;Polterovich et al, 2018).…”

The effect of noise trauma and high-frequency stimulation on thalamic sensory gating in rodents

“…A previous study in anesthetized rats showed enhanced EP response to deviant tones across different sleep states (including REM and non-REM sleep) in the auditory cortex [31]. Other studies reported sensitivity of EPs to deviant tones in primary auditory cortex [32]. However, the role of subcortical structures in SG has not yet been elucidated.…”

Dense Computer Replica of Cortical Microcircuits Unravels Cellular Underpinnings of Auditory Surprise Response

“…3 showing that, without any parameter tuning, the NMC model replicates rather successfully diverse aspects of SSA. Specifically, that the response of the neurons is significantly higher to the deviant than to the standard tone 1,[3][4][5]13,14,29,31,35 , that this difference depends on the probability of the deviant 1,14,35 , and that the response to the deviant is larger than the response to the same tone when it is presented among many tones with denselypacked frequencies -the 'diverse narrow' paradigm 4,13,14 . Furthermore, in some cases, the response for a rarely presented tone ('deviant alone' or 'rare') were smaller than the responses to the same tone presented as a deviant accompanied by a standard tone 4,13,14 .…”

“…We attempted to replicate as closely as possible the in vivo experimental protocols used to explore SSA in rodent auditory cortex 4,5,13,14,29,35,67 . To achieve this, two tones f1 = 6,666 Hz and f2 = 9,600 Hz were selected as the base frequencies for our simulations; these frequencies are separated by 0.52 octaves around the center frequency of the simulated cortical circuit (8,000 Hz); see Fig.…”

“…Neurons in the primary auditory cortex, A1, exhibit a phenomenon called stimulus specific adaptation, SSA. When animals are presented with a tone sequence composed of a frequent tone ("standard") and an occasional rare tone ("deviant") the response of A1 neurons is markedly reduced to the standard tone, whereas their response to the same tone when deviant remains strong [1][2][3][4][5] (see Nelken, 2014 for a definition and introduction to auditory SSA).…”