The impact of preceding noise on the frequency tuning of rat auditory cortex neurons

BMC Neuroscience

Jiping Zhang¹  Xinde Sun¹  Juan He¹  Pengpeng Xing¹  Yinting Peng¹ 

[1] Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, Ministry of Education, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Life Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China

关键词: Receptive field;    Frequency tuning;    Forward masking;    Auditory cortex;    Noise;   

Others  :  1170661
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2202-13-70

 received in 2012-04-05, accepted in 2012-06-11,  发布年份 2012

【 摘 要 】

Background

In a natural environment, contextual noise frequently occurs with a signal sound for detection or discrimination in a temporal relation. However, the representation of sound frequency by auditory cortical neurons in a noisy environment is not fully understood. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the impact of contextual noise on the cortical tuning to signal sound frequency in order to better understand the mechanism of cortical frequency coding in a complex acoustical environment.

Results

We compared the excitatory frequency-level receptive fields (FLRFs) of neurons in the rat primary auditory cortex determined under both quiet and preceding noise conditions. Based on the changes of minimum threshold and the extent of FLRF of auditory cortical neurons, we found that the FLRFs of a cortical neuron were modulated dynamically by a varying preceding noise. When the interstimulus interval between noise and the probe tone was constant, the modulation of the FLRF increased as the level of noise was increased. If the preceding noise level was constant, the modulation decreased when the interstimulus interval was increased. Preceding noise sharpened the bandwidth of the FLRFs of 47.6% tested neurons. Moreover, preceding noise shifted the CFs of 47.6% neurons by more than 0.25 octaves, while the CFs of the rest of the neurons remained relatively unchanged.

Conclusions

The results indicate that the cortical representation of sound frequency is dynamically modulated by contextual acoustical environment, and that there are cortical neurons whose characteristic frequencies were resistant to the interference of contextual noise.

【 授权许可】

   
2012 Peng et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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