Rodent auditory perception: Critical band limitations and plasticity

Insanally, Michele N.; Jin, Menghan; Martins, Ana Raquel O.; D'Amour, James A; Froemke, Robert C.

doi:10.1016/j.neuroscience.2015.03.053

Cited by 16 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 155 publications

(216 reference statements)

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“…Since the effect is already observed in the group trained with the 0.75 octave ΔF, the width of this internal representation extends at least 0.75 octave below the conditioned sound. This is unusually wide given the critical bandwidth in the auditory cortex of C57BL/6 mouse [42,43] but is comparable to the generalization width of latent-inhibition observed using the same Audiobox paradigm in a previous study [24].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Wide sensory filters underlie performance in memory-based discrimination and generalization

2019

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The way animals respond to a stimulus depends largely on an internal comparison between the current sensation and the memory of previous stimuli and outcomes. We know little about the accuracy with which the physical properties of the stimuli influence this type of memory-based discriminative decisions. Research has focused largely on discriminations between stimuli presented in quick succession, where animals can make relative inferences (same or different; higher or lower) from trial to trial. In the current study we used a memory-based task to explore how the stimulus’ physical properties, in this case tone frequency, affect auditory discrimination and generalization in mice. Mice performed ad libitum while living in groups in their home quarters. We found that the frequency distance between safe and conditioned sounds had a constraining effect on discrimination. As the safe-to-conditioned distance decreased across groups, performance deteriorated rapidly, even for frequency differences significantly larger than reported discrimination thresholds. Generalization width was influenced both by the physical distance and the previous experience of the mice, and was not accompanied by a decrease in sensory acuity. In conclusion, memory-based discriminations along a single stimulus dimension are inherently hard, reflecting a high overlap between the memory traces of the relevant stimuli. Memory-based discriminations rely therefore on wide sensory filters.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Wide sensory filters underlie performance in memory-based discrimination and generalization

2019

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“…It should be noted that both animal and human studies have shown that subcortical plasticity, here undocumented, contributes to cortically expressed changes in temporal and spectral processing driven by this and related forms of intensive auditory training (7,(48)(49)(50). Furthermore, cortical plasticity induced by auditory training has been demonstrated in multiparametric sound domains (4,21,22,45).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Positive impacts of early auditory training on cortical processing at an older age

Cheng

Jia

Zhang

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Progressive negative behavioral changes in normal aging are paralleled by a complex series of physical and functional declines expressed in the cerebral cortex. In studies conducted in the auditory domain, these degrading physical and functional cortical changes have been shown to be broadly reversed by intensive progressive training that improves the spectral and temporal resolution of acoustic inputs and suppresses behavioral distractors. Here we found older rats that were intensively trained on an attentionally demanding modulation-rate recognition task in young adulthood substantially retained training-driven improvements in temporal rate discrimination abilities over a subsequent 18-mo epoch-that is, forward into their older age. In parallel, this young-adult auditory training enduringly enhanced temporal and spectral information processing in their primary auditory cortices (A1). Substantially greater numbers of parvalbumin-and somatostatin-labeled inhibitory neurons (closer to the numbers recorded in young vigorous adults) were recorded in the A1 and hippocampus in old trained versus untrained age-matched rats. These results show that a simple form of training in young adulthood in this rat model enduringly delays the otherwise expected deterioration of the physical status and functional operations of the auditory nervous system, with evident training impacts generalized to the hippocampus.aging | auditory cortex | behavioral training | cortical processing | inhibition A degradation of the status of physical brain machinery, expressed by a decline in its temporal processing abilities, has been repeatedly associated with its deteriorating functional status in normal aging (1-4). Recent studies have shown that the machinery that supports processing accuracy and speed, as well as the processes supporting attention control and distractor suppression, can be substantially rejuvenated via simple forms of intensive training in the aged-rat model (4, 5). With auditory perceptual training, in parallel with recovery in behavioral abilities to that matching young-animal performance levels, serials of key physical, chemical, and functional aspects of cortical processing machinery in the trained rats were shown to be restored to a physical or functional status that approached that normally recorded in vigorous young-adult animals.In human studies, substantial changes in speed of processing (SOP) and in other spectro-temporal (or spatiotemporal) signal resolution of performance abilities have been shown to result from attention-demanding, speed-challenged auditory (3, 5-7) or visual training (8-11). For example, the accurate behavioral identification and stimulus-order reconstruction of rapidly successive auditory stimuli was restored in human individuals trained in their eighth decade of life to a performance level normally typifying human performance abilities recorded in their third or fourth decade (3, 6).Our goal here was to define the magnitude and endurance of an intense dose of attention-demanding modulation di...

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“…Spectral summation of excitation and inhibition produced by several tones in the excitatory and inhibitory frequency receptive fields of IC neurons happens in critical bands (Ehret & Merzenich, 1985, 1988Egorova & Ehret, 2008;King et al, 2015). Neural critical bands, which seem to emerge from the tonotopic organization and laminar structure of IC neurons (Schreiner & Langner, 1997), define the frequency range of frequency resolution but do not determine the type of response and the response rates that are generated as output.…”

Section: Spectral Summation and Facilitation In Neurons With Differenmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hence, mouse wriggling calls can serve as general acoustical models for studies about how and where in the auditory system grouping together of spectrally resolved frequencies to acoustic objects occurs in the neural coding. Here, we study the auditory midbrain (inferior colliculus, IC) for possible neural correlates of spectral grouping of wriggling call frequencies because in the IC, spectral resolution as expressed by neural critical bands has reached, on average, perceptual values (Ehret & Merzenich, 1985, 1988Egorova et al, 2006;King et al, 2015). We hypothesize that responses of IC neurons are improved or better facilitated by combined spectrally resolved than non-resolved frequency components.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spectral summation and facilitation in on‐ and off‐responses for optimized representation of communication calls in mouse inferior colliculus

Akimov

Егорова

Ehret

2017

Eur J of Neuroscience

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Selectivity for processing of species-specific vocalizations and communication sounds has often been associated with the auditory cortex. The midbrain inferior colliculus, however, is the first center in the auditory pathways of mammals integrating acoustic information processed in separate nuclei and channels in the brainstem and, therefore, could significantly contribute to enhance the perception of species' communication sounds. Here, we used natural wriggling calls of mouse pups, which communicate need for maternal care to adult females, and further 15 synthesized sounds to test the hypothesis that neurons in the central nucleus of the inferior colliculus of adult females optimize their response rates for reproduction of the three main harmonics (formants) of wriggling calls. The results confirmed the hypothesis showing that average response rates, as recorded extracellularly from single units, were highest and spectral facilitation most effective for both onset and offset responses to the call and call models with three resolved frequencies according to critical bands in perception. In addition, the general on- and/or off-response enhancement in almost half the investigated 122 neurons favors not only perception of single calls but also of vocalization rhythm. In summary, our study provides strong evidence that critical-band resolved frequency components within a communication sound increase the probability of its perception by boosting the signal-to-noise ratio of neural response rates within the inferior colliculus for at least 20% (our criterion for facilitation). These mechanisms, including enhancement of rhythm coding, are generally favorable to processing of other animal and human vocalizations, including formants of speech sounds.

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Rodent auditory perception: Critical band limitations and plasticity

Cited by 16 publications

References 155 publications

Wide sensory filters underlie performance in memory-based discrimination and generalization

Wide sensory filters underlie performance in memory-based discrimination and generalization

Positive impacts of early auditory training on cortical processing at an older age

Spectral summation and facilitation in on‐ and off‐responses for optimized representation of communication calls in mouse inferior colliculus

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