Receptive field dimensionality increases from the auditory midbrain to cortex.
In the primary auditory cortex, spectrotemporal receptive fields (STRFs) are composed of multiple independent components that capture the processing of disparate stimulus aspects by any given neuron. The origin of these multidimensional stimulus filters in the central auditory system is unknown. To determine whether multicomponent STRFs emerge prior to the forebrain, we recorded from single neurons in the main obligatory station of the auditory midbrain, the inferior colliculus. By comparing results of different spike-triggered techniques, we found that the neural responses in the inferior colliculus can be accounted for by a single stimulus filter. This was observed for all temporal response patterns, from strongly phasic to tonic. Our results reveal that spectrotemporal stimulus encoding undergoes a fundamental transformation along the auditory neuraxis, with the emergence of multidimensional receptive fields beyond the auditory midbrain.
The UCSF Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Otolaryngology-Headand Neck Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA. craig@phy.ucsf.edu
Craig A
CA
Atencio
Tatyana O
TO
Sharpee
Christoph E
CE
Schreiner
D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D001306:Auditory Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D002415:Cats; D007245:Inferior Colliculi / Q000502:physiology; D008636:Mesencephalon / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*