Garcia-Lazaro, JA;
Ahmed, B;
Schnupp, JWH;
(2011)
Emergence of Tuning to Natural Stimulus Statistics along the Central Auditory Pathway.
PLOS ONE
, 6
(8)
, Article e22584. 10.1371/journal.pone.0022584.
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Abstract
We have previously shown that neurons in primary auditory cortex (A1) of anaesthetized (ketamine/medetomidine) ferrets respond more strongly and reliably to dynamic stimuli whose statistics follow "natural" 1/f dynamics than to stimuli exhibiting pitch and amplitude modulations that are faster (1/f(0.5)) or slower (1/f(2)) than 1/f. To investigate where along the central auditory pathway this 1/f-modulation tuning arises, we have now characterized responses of neurons in the central nucleus of the inferior colliculus (ICC) and the ventral division of the mediate geniculate nucleus of the thalamus (MGV) to 1/f(gamma) distributed stimuli with gamma varying between 0.5 and 2.8. We found that, while the great majority of neurons recorded from the ICC showed a strong preference for the most rapidly varying (1/f(0.5) distributed) stimuli, responses from MGV neurons did not exhibit marked or systematic preferences for any particular gamma exponent. Only in A1 did a majority of neurons respond with higher firing rates to stimuli in which gamma takes values near 1. These results indicate that 1/f tuning emerges at forebrain levels of the ascending auditory pathway.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Emergence of Tuning to Natural Stimulus Statistics along the Central Auditory Pathway |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0022584 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0022584 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2011 Garcia-Lazaro et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This research was supported by BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) grant Nbr BB/D009758/1 and EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) grant Nbr EP/C010841/1 to JWHS, and studentships from Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (National Council for Science and Technology, México) and Deafness Research UK to JAGL. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. |
| Keywords: | MECHANISMS UNDERLYING SELECTIVITY, FREQUENCY-MODULATED SWEEPS, INFERIOR COLLICULUS, 1/F NOISE, PALLID BAT, CORTEX, MUSIC, COMMUNICATION, FLUCTUATIONS, RESPONSES |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1321795 |
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