title: Spectrotemporal response properties of core auditory cortex neurons in awake monkey.
abstract: So far, most studies of core auditory cortex (AC) have characterized the spectral and temporal tuning properties of cells in non-awake, anesthetized preparations. As experiments in awake animals are scarce, we here used dynamic spectral-temporal broadband ripples to study the properties of the spectrotemporal receptive fields (STRFs) of AC cells in awake monkeys. We show that AC neurons were typically most sensitive to low ripple densities (spectral) and low velocities (temporal), and that most cells were not selective for a particular spectrotemporal sweep direction. A substantial proportion of neurons preferred amplitude-modulated sounds (at zero ripple density) to dynamic ripples (at non-zero densities). The vast majority (>93%) of modulation transfer functions were separable with respect to spectral and temporal modulations, indicating that time and spectrum are independently processed in AC neurons. We also analyzed the linear predictability of AC responses to natural vocalizations on the basis of the STRF. We discuss our findings in the light of results obtained from the monkey midbrain inferior colliculus by comparing the spectrotemporal tuning properties and linear predictability of these two important auditory stages.
authors: Department of Biophysics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Radboud University Nijmegen, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors: Roohollah
authors: R
authors: Massoudi
authors: Department of Biophysics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Radboud University Nijmegen, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Radboud University Medical Centre Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9101 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors: Marc M
authors: MM
authors: Van Wanrooij
authors: Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head & Neck Surgery, Brain Center Rudolf Magnus, University Medical Center Utrecht, P.O. Box 85500, 3508 GA Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors: Huib
authors: H
authors: Versnel
authors: Department of Biophysics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Radboud University Nijmegen, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors: A John
authors: AJ
authors: Van Opstal
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000166:cytology*; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D008297:Male; D009474:Neurons / Q000166:cytology*; D013057:Spectrum Analysis; D013997:Time Factors; D014851:Wakefulness / Q000502:physiology*