scholarly journals Brain Activation Patterns in Response to Conspecific and Heterospecific Social Acoustic Signals in Female Plainfin Midshipman Fish, Porichthys notatus

2018 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Mohr ◽  
Yiran Chang ◽  
Ashwin A. Bhandiwad ◽  
Paul M. Forlano ◽  
Joseph A. Sisneros
Keyword(s):  
Auditory System ◽  
Ambient Noise ◽  
Acoustic Signals ◽  
Early Gene ◽  
Torus Semicircularis ◽  
Neural Activation ◽  
Advertisement Calls ◽  
Acoustic Stimuli ◽  
Porichthys Notatus ◽  
Plainfin Midshipman

While the peripheral auditory system of fish has been well studied, less is known about how the fish’s brain and central auditory system process complex social acoustic signals. The plainfin midshipman fish, Porichthys notatus, has become a good species for investigating the neural basis of acoustic communication because the production and reception of acoustic signals is paramount for this species’ reproductive success. Nesting males produce long-duration advertisement calls that females detect and localize among the noise in the intertidal zone to successfully find mates and spawn. How female midshipman are able to discriminate male advertisement calls from environmental noise and other acoustic stimuli is unknown. Using the immediate early gene product cFos as a marker for neural activity, we quantified neural activation of the ascending auditory pathway in female midshipman exposed to conspecific advertisement calls, heterospecific white seabass calls, or ambient environment noise. We hypothesized that auditory hindbrain nuclei would be activated by general acoustic stimuli (ambient noise and other biotic acoustic stimuli) whereas auditory neurons in the midbrain and forebrain would be selectively activated by conspecific advertisement calls. We show that neural activation in two regions of the auditory hindbrain, i.e., the rostral intermediate division of the descending octaval nucleus and the ventral division of the secondary octaval nucleus, did not differ via cFos immunoreactive (cFos-ir) activity when exposed to different acoustic stimuli. In contrast, female midshipman exposed to conspecific advertisement calls showed greater cFos-ir in the nucleus centralis of the midbrain torus semicircularis compared to fish exposed only to ambient noise. No difference in cFos-ir was observed in the torus semicircularis of animals exposed to conspecific versus heterospecific calls. However, cFos-ir was greater in two forebrain structures that receive auditory input, i.e., the central posterior nucleus of the thalamus and the anterior tuberal hypothalamus, when exposed to conspecific calls versus either ambient noise or heterospecific calls. Our results suggest that higher-order neurons in the female midshipman midbrain torus semicircularis, thalamic central posterior nucleus, and hypothalamic anterior tuberal nucleus may be necessary for the discrimination of complex social acoustic signals. Furthermore, neurons in the central posterior and anterior tuberal nuclei are differentially activated by exposure to conspecific versus other acoustic stimuli.

Seasonal Plasticity of Auditory Saccular Sensitivity in the Vocal Plainfin Midshipman Fish, Porichthys notatus

2009 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 1121-1131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Sisneros
Keyword(s):  
Breeding Season ◽  
Hair Cells ◽  
Adaptive Plasticity ◽  
Advertisement Call ◽  
Reproductive State ◽  
Advertisement Calls ◽  
Porichthys Notatus ◽  
Reproductive Females ◽  
Plainfin Midshipman

The plainfin midshipman fish, Porichthys notatus, is a seasonally breeding species of marine teleost fish that generates acoustic signals for intraspecific social and reproductive-related communication. Female midshipman use the inner ear saccule as the main acoustic endorgan for hearing to detect and locate vocalizing males that produce multiharmonic advertisement calls during the breeding season. Previous work showed that the frequency sensitivity of midshipman auditory saccular afferents changed seasonally with female reproductive state such that summer reproductive females became better suited than winter nonreproductive females to encode the dominant higher harmonics of the male advertisement calls. The focus of this study was to test the hypothesis that seasonal reproductive-dependent changes in saccular afferent tuning is paralleled by similar changes in saccular sensitivity at the level of the hair-cell receptor. Here, I examined the evoked response properties of midshipman saccular hair cells from winter nonreproductive and summer reproductive females to determine if reproductive state affects the frequency response and threshold of the saccule to behaviorally relevant single tone stimuli. Saccular potentials were recorded from populations of hair cells in vivo while sound was presented by an underwater speaker. Results indicate that saccular hair cells from reproductive females had thresholds that were ∼8 to 13 dB lower than nonreproductive females across a broad range of frequencies that included the dominant higher harmonic components and the fundamental frequency of the male's advertisement call. These seasonal-reproductive-dependent changes in thresholds varied differentially across the three (rostral, middle, and caudal) regions of the saccule. Such reproductive-dependent changes in saccule sensitivity may represent an adaptive plasticity of the midshipman auditory sense to enhance mate detection, recognition, and localization during the breeding season.

Speaker Verification via Modeling Kurtosis Using Sparse Coding

2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (03) ◽  
pp. 1659008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Wang ◽  
Jiqing Han ◽  
Tieran Zheng ◽  
Guibin Zheng ◽  
Xingyu Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Statistical Method ◽  
Auditory System ◽  
Sparse Coding ◽  
Speaker Verification ◽  
Primary Auditory Cortex ◽  
Acoustic Signals ◽  
Acoustic Stimuli ◽  
Independent Events ◽  
Individual Speaker

This paper proposes a new model for speaker verification by employing kurtosis statistical method based on sparse coding of human auditory system. Since only a small number of neurons in primary auditory cortex are activated in encoding acoustic stimuli and sparse independent events are used to represent the characteristics of the neurons. Each individual dictionary is learned from individual speaker samples where dictionary atoms correspond to the cortex neurons. The neuron responses possess statistical properties of acoustic signals in auditory cortex so that the activation distribution of individual speaker’s neurons is approximated as the characteristics of the speaker. Kurtosis is an efficient approach to measure the sparsity of the neuron from its activation distribution, and the vector composed of the kurtosis of every neuron is obtained as the model to characterize the speaker’s voice. The experimental results demonstrate that the kurtosis model outperforms the baseline systems and an effective identity validation function is achieved desirably.

scholarly journals Exposure to Advertisement Calls of Reproductive Competitors Activates Vocal-Acoustic and Catecholaminergic Neurons in the Plainfin Midshipman Fish, Porichthys notatus

PLoS ONE ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. e70474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher L. Petersen ◽  
Miky Timothy ◽  
D. Spencer Kim ◽  
Ashwin A. Bhandiwad ◽  
Robert A. Mohr ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Advertisement Calls ◽  
Catecholaminergic Neurons ◽  
Porichthys Notatus ◽  
Plainfin Midshipman

scholarly journals Auditory evoked potentials of utricular hair cells in the plainfin midshipman, Porichthys notatus

2020 ◽  
Vol 223 (17) ◽  
pp. jeb226464
Author(s):  
Loranzie S. Rogers ◽  
Joseph A. Sisneros
Keyword(s):  
Evoked Potentials ◽  
Hair Cells ◽  
Auditory Evoked Potentials ◽  
High Gain ◽  
Type I ◽  
Acoustic Stimuli ◽  
Porichthys Notatus ◽  
Socially Relevant ◽  
And Function ◽  
Plainfin Midshipman

ABSTRACTThe plainfin midshipman, Porichthys notatus, is a soniferous marine teleost fish that generates acoustic signals for intraspecific social communication. Nocturnally active males and females rely on their auditory sense to detect and locate vocally active conspecifics during social behaviors. Previous work showed that the midshipman inner ear saccule and lagena are highly adapted to detect and encode socially relevant acoustic stimuli, but the auditory sensitivity and function of the midshipman utricle remain largely unknown. Here, we characterized the auditory evoked potentials from hair cells in the utricle of non-reproductive type I males and tested the hypothesis that the midshipman utricle is sensitive to behaviorally relevant acoustic stimuli. Hair cell potentials were recorded from the rostral, medial and caudal regions of the utricle in response to pure tone stimuli presented by an underwater speaker. We show that the utricle is highly sensitive to particle motion stimuli produced by an underwater speaker positioned in the horizontal plane. Utricular potentials were recorded across a broad range of frequencies with lowest particle acceleration (dB re. 1 m s−2) thresholds occurring at 105 Hz (lowest frequency tested; mean threshold −32 dB re. 1 m s−2) and highest thresholds at 605–1005 Hz (mean threshold range −5 to −4 dB re. 1 m s−2). The high gain and broadband frequency sensitivity of the utricle suggest that it likely serves a primary auditory function and is well suited to detect conspecific vocalizations including broadband agonistic signals and the multiharmonic advertisement calls produced by reproductive type I males.

scholarly journals Conspecific odor cues induce different vocal responses in serrate-legged small treefrogs, but only in the absence of acoustic signals

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ke Deng ◽  
Ya Zhou ◽  
Qiao-Ling He ◽  
Bi-Cheng Zhu ◽  
Tong-Liang Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Cues ◽  
Acoustic Signals ◽  
Calling Behavior ◽  
Vocal Response ◽  
Conspecific Odor ◽  
Advertisement Calls ◽  
Odor Cues ◽  
Vocal Responses ◽  
Acoustic Stimuli ◽  
Anuran Species

Abstract Background Signal detection is crucial to survival and successful reproduction, and animals often modify behavioral decisions based on information they obtained from the social context. Undeniably, the decision-making in male-male competition and female choice of anurans (frogs and toads) depends heavily on acoustic signals. However, increasing empirical evidence suggests that additional or alternative types of cue (e.g., visual, chemical, and vibratory) can be used to detect, discriminate and locate conspecifics in many anuran species. Nevertheless, few studies have investigated whether conspecific odor cues affect male’s calling behavior. In this study, we conducted an experiment to investigate whether and how different chemical cues (male odors, female odors, and stress odors) from conspecifics affect male’s calling strategies in serrate-legged small treefrogs (Kurixalus odontotarsus), and whether the combined chemical and acoustic stimuli have additive effects on calling behavior or not. Results We found that compared with female odors, male K. odontotarsus reduced calling investment in response to male odors or stress odors, in the absence of rival’s advertisement calls. When odor stimuli and advertisement calls were presented simultaneously, however, there were no differences in the vocal response of focal males among odor groups. Conclusions These results provide evidence that male treefrogs switch calling investment according to different odor cues from conspecifics, and further demonstrate that calling behavior can be affected by chemical cues in anuran species. Our study highlights the potential role of airborne chemical cues in sex identification and contributes to increase our understanding of anuran communication.

Neuromodulatory Feedback to the Inferior Colliculus

2018 ◽  
pp. 576-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Hurley
Keyword(s):  
Inferior Colliculus ◽  
Auditory System ◽  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Internal State ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Auditory Information ◽  
Situational Variables ◽  
Acoustic Stimuli ◽  
Functionally Diverse ◽  
Behavioral Information

The inferior colliculus (IC) receives prominent projections from centralized neuromodulatory systems. These systems include extra-auditory clusters of cholinergic, dopaminergic, noradrenergic, and serotonergic neurons. Although these modulatory sites are not explicitly part of the auditory system, they receive projections from primary auditory regions and are responsive to acoustic stimuli. This bidirectional influence suggests the existence of auditory-modulatory feedback loops. A characteristic of neuromodulatory centers is that they integrate inputs from anatomically widespread and functionally diverse sets of brain regions. This connectivity gives neuromodulatory systems the potential to import information into the auditory system on situational variables that accompany acoustic stimuli, such as context, internal state, or experience. Once released, neuromodulators functionally reconfigure auditory circuitry through a variety of receptors expressed by auditory neurons. In addition to shaping ascending auditory information, neuromodulation within the IC influences behaviors that arise subcortically, such as prepulse inhibition of the startle response. Neuromodulatory systems therefore provide a route for integrative behavioral information to access auditory processing from its earliest levels.

scholarly journals Sexually dimorphic swim bladder extensions enhance the auditory sensitivity of female plainfin midshipman fish, Porichthys notatus

2019 ◽  
Vol 222 (14) ◽  
pp. jeb204552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orphal Colleye ◽  
Brooke J. Vetter ◽  
Robert A. Mohr ◽  
Lane H. Seeley ◽  
Joseph A. Sisneros
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Sensitivity ◽  
Sexually Dimorphic ◽  
Swim Bladder ◽  
Porichthys Notatus ◽  
Plainfin Midshipman
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