While animals navigating the real world face a barrage of complex sensory input, their brains have evolved to perceptually compress multidimensional information by selectively extracting the features relevant for survival. For instance, communication signals supporting social interactions in several mammalian species consist of acoustically complex sequences of vocalizations, however little is known about what information listeners extract from such timevarying sensory streams. Here, we utilize female mice's natural behavioural response to male courtship songs to evaluate the relevant acoustic dimensions used in their social decisions. We found that females were highly sensitive to disruptions of song temporal regularity, and preferentially approached playbacks of intact male songs over rhythmically irregular versions of the songs. In contrast, female behaviour was invariant to manipulations affecting the songs' sequential organization, or the spectrotemporal structure of individual syllables. The results reveal temporal regularity as a key acoustic cue extracted by mammalian listeners from complex vocal sequences during goal-directed social behaviour.

While animals navigating the real world face a barrage of sensory input, their brains evolved to perceptually compress multidimensional information by selectively extracting the features relevant for survival. Notably, communication signals supporting social interactions in several mammalian species consist of acoustically complex sequences of vocalizations. However, little is known about what information listeners extract from such time-varying sensory streams. Here, we utilize female mice’s natural behavioural response to male courtship songs to identify the relevant acoustic dimensions used in their social decisions. We found that females were highly sensitive to disruptions of song temporal regularity, and preferentially approached playbacks of intact over rhythmically irregular versions of male songs. In contrast, female behaviour was invariant to manipulations affecting the songs’ sequential organization, or the spectro-temporal structure of individual syllables. The results reveal temporal regularity as a key acoustic cue extracted by mammalian listeners from complex vocal sequences during goal-directed social behaviour.

Aims Although morphological attributes of cells and their substructures are recognised readouts of physiological or pathophysiological states, these have been relatively understudied in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) research. Methods In this study, we integrate multichannel fluorescence high‐content microscopy data with deep learning imaging methods to reveal—directly from unsegmented images—novel neurite‐associated morphological perturbations associated with (ALS‐causing) VCP‐mutant human motor neurons (MNs). Results Surprisingly, we reveal that previously unrecognised disease‐relevant information is withheld in broadly used and often considered ‘generic’ biological markers of nuclei (DAPI) and neurons ( β III‐tubulin). Additionally, we identify changes within the information content of ALS‐related RNA binding protein (RBP) immunofluorescence imaging that is captured in VCP‐mutant MN cultures. Furthermore, by analysing MN cultures exposed to different extrinsic stressors, we show that heat stress recapitulates key aspects of ALS. Conclusions Our study therefore reveals disease‐relevant information contained in a range of both generic and more specific fluorescent markers and establishes the use of image‐based deep learning methods for rapid, automated and unbiased identification of biological hypotheses.