scholarly journals Temporal characteristics of neural sensitivities to the interaural phase difference in the inferior colliculus

2002 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 286-286
Author(s):  
Shigeto Furukawa ◽  
Katuhiro Maki ◽  
Makio Kashino ◽  
Hiroshi Riquimaroux ◽  
Tatsuya Hirahara
2011 ◽  
Vol 31 (25) ◽  
pp. 9192-9204 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Zohar ◽  
T. M. Shackleton ◽  
I. Nelken ◽  
A. R. Palmer ◽  
M. Shamir

1989 ◽  
Vol 146 (1) ◽  
pp. 307-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. T. Takahashi

The barn owl's auditory system computes interaural differences in time and amplitude and derives from them the horizontal and vertical coordinates of the sound source, respectively. Within the external nucleus of its inferior colliculus are auditory neurones, called ‘space-specific neurones’, that have spatial receptive fields. To activate a space-specific neurone, a sound must originate from a circumscribed region of space, or, if the sounds are delivered to each ear separately, using earphones, the stimuli must have the combination of interaural time and amplitude difference that simulates a sound broadcast from their receptive field. The sound-localization cues are processed in parallel, non-overlapping pathways extending from the cochlear nuclei to the subdivision of the inferior colliculus that innervates the space-specific neurones. Processing in the time pathway involves the coding of monaural phase angle, the derivation of sensitivity for interaural phase difference, and the calculation of interaural time difference (ITD) from interaural phase difference. The last process involves groups of neurones in the inferior colliculus whose collective firing signals a unique ITD, even though the activity of each constituent neurone signals multiple ITDs. The projections of these ensembles to the space-specific neurone endow the latter with a selectivity for ITD. Processing in the amplitude channel, about which less is known, initially involves an inhibitory process that sharpens the directional sensitivity of neurones in a lateral lemniscal nucleus. The inhibition is mediated by a commissural projection from the same lemniscal nucleus of the opposite side. At higher levels of the auditory system, neurones that are tuned to a limited range of interaural amplitude differences are found. It is proposed that at these higher stages, interaural amplitude difference, like ITD, is coded amidst an ensemble of neurones.


1972 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 771-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Stromsta

Stutterers and nonstutterers cancelled the auditory sensation evoked by bone-conducted sinusoidal signals. They accomplished this by appropriate phase and amplitude adjustments of simultaneously presented bilateral air-conducted signals of the same frequency. Criterion measures of interaural phase difference at the point of cancellation were obtained for seven frequencies. The mean interaural phase differences obtained by stutterers were consistently greater than those of the nonstutterers. Based on time-equivalent values of the mean interaural phase differences, the values for stutterers were approximately twice as great as for nonstutterers at 150, 300, and 1200 Hz. The mean interaural phase difference found to exist for stutterers at 150 Hz approximates the magnitude of phase shift of normally delayed air-conducted auditory feedback of speech sounds that serves to induce experimental blockage of phonation. This relationship, in view of other findings, offers credence to the idea that disturbance of laryngeal function effected by an anomalous audition-phonation control system could be a causative agent in stuttering.


2009 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 1781-1799 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian H. Scott ◽  
Brian J. Malone ◽  
Malcolm N. Semple

Neurons in auditory cortex of awake primates are selective for the spatial location of a sound source, yet the neural representation of the binaural cues that underlie this tuning remains undefined. We examined this representation in 283 single neurons across the low-frequency auditory core in alert macaques, trained to discriminate binaural cues for sound azimuth. In response to binaural beat stimuli, which mimic acoustic motion by modulating the relative phase of a tone at the two ears, these neurons robustly modulate their discharge rate in response to this directional cue. In accordance with prior studies, the preferred interaural phase difference (IPD) of these neurons typically corresponds to azimuthal locations contralateral to the recorded hemisphere. Whereas binaural beats evoke only transient discharges in anesthetized cortex, neurons in awake cortex respond throughout the IPD cycle. In this regard, responses are consistent with observations at earlier stations of the auditory pathway. Discharge rate is a band-pass function of the frequency of IPD modulation in most neurons (73%), but both discharge rate and temporal synchrony are independent of the direction of phase modulation. When subjected to a receiver operator characteristic analysis, the responses of individual neurons are insufficient to account for the perceptual acuity of these macaques in an IPD discrimination task, suggesting the need for neural pooling at the cortical level.


2005 ◽  
Vol 93 (6) ◽  
pp. 3313-3326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shigeto Furukawa ◽  
Katuhiro Maki ◽  
Makio Kashino ◽  
Hiroshi Riquimaroux

This study examined the sensitivities of the neuronal responses in the inferior colliculus (IC) to the interaural phase difference (IPD) of a preceding tone, and explored its implications in the neural-population representation of the IPD. Single-unit responses were recorded from the IC of anesthetized gerbils. The stimulus was a dichotic tone sequence with a common frequency (typically the unit’s best frequency) and level (10–20 dB relative to the threshold), consisting of a conditioner (200 ms) followed by a probe (50 ms) with a silent gap (5–100 ms) between them. The IPDs of the 2 tones were varied independently. The presence of a conditioner generally suppressed the probe-driven responses; the effect size increased as the conditioner IPD approached the unit’s most responsive IPD. The units’ preferred IPDs were relatively invariant with the conditioner IPD. Two types of models were used to evaluate the effects of a conditioner on the IPD representation at the level of IC neural population. One was a version of the population-vector model. The other was the hemispheric-channel model, which assumed that the stimulus IPD is represented by the activities of 2 broadly tuned hemispheric channels. Both models predicted that, in the presence of a conditioner, the IPD representation would shift in a direction away from the conditioner IPD. This appears to emphasize the difference between the conditioner and the probe IPDs. The results indicate that in the IC, neural processes for IPD adapt to the stimulus history to enhance the representational contrast between successive sounds.


2007 ◽  
Vol 98 (5) ◽  
pp. 2566-2579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myles Mc Laughlin ◽  
Bram Van de Sande ◽  
Marcel van der Heijden ◽  
Philip X. Joris

A defining feature of auditory systems across animal divisions is the ability to sort different frequency components of a sound into separate neural frequency channels. Narrowband filtering in the auditory periphery is of obvious advantage for the representation of sound spectrum and manifests itself pervasively in human psychophysical studies as the critical band. Peripheral filtering also alters coding of the temporal waveform, so that temporal responses in the auditory periphery reflect both the stimulus waveform and peripheral filtering. Temporal coding is essential for the measurement of the time delay between waveforms at the two ears—a critical component of sound localization. A number of human psychophysical studies have shown a wider effective critical bandwidth with binaural stimuli than with monaural stimuli, although other studies found no difference. Here we directly compare binaural and monaural bandwidths (BWs) in the anesthetized cat. We measure monaural BW in the auditory nerve (AN) and binaural BW in the inferior colliculus (IC) using spectrally manipulated broadband noise and response metrics that reflect spike timing. The stimulus was a pair of noise tokens that were interaurally in phase for all frequencies below a certain flip frequency (fflip) and that had an interaural phase difference of π above fflip. The response was measured as a function of fflip and, using a separate stimulus protocol, as a function of interaural correlation. We find that both AN and IC filter BW depend on characteristic frequency, but that there is no difference in mean BW between the AN and IC.


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