title: The influence of the perceptual or fear learning on rats' prepulse inhibition induced by changes in the correlation between two spatially separated noise sounds.
abstract: Perceptually grouping a sound source with its reflections and separating them from irrelevant background noise sounds need computation of sound correlations and are critical for identifying and localizing the sound source in a complex acoustic environment. Using the prepulse inhibition of the acoustic startle reflex (ASR) as a measure, the present study investigated whether rats are able to detect correlation changes between sounds from different spatial locations. The results show that the rat's ASR amplitude was suppressed when the startle-eliciting stimulus was preceded by either an uncorrelated noise fragment or an anti-phase noise fragment that was embedded in two identical (correlated) but spatially separated noises. Suppression of the ASR amplitude increased as the duration of the noise fragment increased from 5ms to 40ms. The suppressive effect was also progressively enhanced after rats underwent successive testing sessions. Moreover, an enhanced suppression of the ASR amplitude was observed after rats were exposed to footshock that was precisely paired with a 100-ms correlation-change fragment. The results indicate that rats are able to detect the correlation change between sounds from two separated spatial locations, and the detection can be facilitated by both perceptual learning and emotional learning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, National Key Laboratory on Machine Perception, Speech and Hearing Research Center, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Zhigang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Junli
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ping
authors.forename: Xian
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xihong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000818:Animals; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D013216:Reflex, Startle / Q000502:physiology; D013017:Sound Localization / Q000502:physiology*