Acoustical cues for sound localization by the Mongolian gerbil, <i>Meriones unguiculatus</i>

Maki, Katuhiro; Furukawa, Shigeto

doi:10.1121/1.1944647

Cited by 71 publications

(91 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…We trained gerbils to place their nose in a ring to disrupt a light beam and elicit a sound from one of two speakers, which were spaced symmetrically about the midline at various angles. The sounds were low-frequency noise bursts (Ͻ1.2 kHz) for which ITD is the only cue available for localization (Maki and Furukawa, 2005). The ability of individual gerbils to correctly identify the speaker that emitted the sound for a range of separation angles is shown in Figure 1b.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ability of individual gerbils to correctly identify the speaker that emitted the sound for a range of separation angles is shown in Figure 1b. Individual threshold separation angles ranged from 7°to 20°, corresponding to a difference in ITD of ϳ11-30 s, with a median value of 14°, or 21 s (approximate ITDs were derived from the head-related transfer functions in Maki and Furukawa (2005)). These values are comparable to the threshold difference for ITD in humans (Mills, 1958).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the vast majority of cells (53/61, 87%) for which we could compute our measure of binaural type, the value was greater than zero, suggesting that they received excitatory inputs from both ears. The distribution of best ITDs was tightly clustered around 200 ms (mean ϭ 201 ms, SD ϭ 37 ms) and a majority of cells (78/112, 70%) had best ITDs beyond the physiological limit for gerbils of 135 s (Maki and Furukawa, 2005). For our measure of ITD sensitivity type, the distribution ranged from Ϫ0.86 to 0.91, but a majority of cells (83/112, 74%) had values less than zero, indicating that they were sensitive primarily to ITDs in the fine structure of a sound.…”

Section: Response Properties Of Neurons In the Gerbil Inferior Collicmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Population Coding of Interaural Time Differences in Gerbils and Barn Owls

Lesica¹,

Lingner²,

Grothe³

2010

J. Neurosci.

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Interaural time differences (ITDs) are the primary cue for the localization of low-frequency sound sources in the azimuthal plane. For decades, it was assumed that the coding of ITDs in the mammalian brain was similar to that in the avian brain, where information is sparsely distributed across individual neurons, but recent studies have suggested otherwise. In this study, we characterized the representation of ITDs in adult male and female gerbils. First, we performed behavioral experiments to determine the acuity with which gerbils can use ITDs to localize sounds. Next, we used different decoders to infer ITDs from the activity of a population of neurons in central nucleus of the inferior colliculus. These results show that ITDs are not represented in a distributed manner, but rather in the summed activity of the entire population. To contrast these results with those from a population where the representation of ITDs is known to be sparsely distributed, we performed the same analysis on activity from the external nucleus of the inferior colliculus of adult male and female barn owls. Together, our results support the idea that, unlike the avian brain, the mammalian brain represents ITDs in the overall activity of a homogenous population of neurons within each hemisphere.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Response Properties Of Neurons In the Gerbil Inferior Collicmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Population Coding of Interaural Time Differences in Gerbils and Barn Owls

Lesica¹,

Lingner²,

Grothe³

2010

J. Neurosci.

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“…Thus, for reference ITDs of 0-200 μs most neurons are responding on the slope, where discrimination is best, while for a reference ITD of 300 μs most neurons are forced to detect changes near their peaks, where discrimination is less optimal. It would be interesting to test the ITD discrimination in a species with a head even smaller than the rabbit, such as a gerbil, where the physiological window is expected to be about 120 μs (Maki and Furukawa, 2005). Because the ITD tuning of neurons is similar between rabbits and gerbils (Spitzer and Semple, 1995) this might be a case where the decrease in ITD discrimination does not match the physiological window.…”

Section: Comparison With Neural Thresholdsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral sensitivity to interaural time differences in the rabbit

et al. 2008

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An important cue for sound localization and separation of signals from noise is the interaural time difference (ITD). Humans are able to localize sounds within 1-2° and can detect very small changes in the ITD (10-20 μs). In contrast, many animals localize sounds with less precision than humans. Rabbits, for example, have sound localization thresholds of ~22°. There is only limited information about behavioral ITD discrimination in animals with poor sound localization acuity that are typically used for the neural recordings. For this study, we measured behavioral discrimination of ITDs in the rabbit for a range of reference ITDs from 0 to ± 300 μs. The behavioral task was conditioned avoidance and the stimulus was band-limited noise (500-1500 Hz). Across animals, the average discrimination threshold was 50-60 μs for reference ITDs of 0 to ± 200 μs. There was no trend in the thresholds across this range of reference ITDs. For a reference ITD of ± 300 μs, which is near the limit of the physiological window defined by the head width in this species, the discrimination threshold increased to ~100 μs. The ITD discrimination in rabbits less acute than in cats, which have a similar head size. This result supports the suggestion that ITD discrimination, like sound localization (see Heffner, 1997, Acta Otolaryngol Suppl 532:46-53, 1997) is determined by factors other than head size.

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“…3B), causing a plateau in the summed firing rate at contralateral azimuths. Since the ITD range of gerbils (Maki and Furukawa, 2005) is about one-half that of rabbits (Kim et al, 2010;Day et al, 2012) or cats (Tollin and Koka, 2009), and one-fifth that of humans, the success of the single-channel decoder in gerbils (at low frequencies) is therefore likely due to their small ITD range.…”

Section: Comparison To Previous Sound Localization Decoding Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decoding Sound Source Location and Separation Using Neural Population Activity Patterns

Day

Delgutte

2013

J. Neurosci.

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The strategies by which the central nervous system decodes the properties of sensory stimuli, such as sound source location, from the responses of a population of neurons are a matter of debate. We show, using the average firing rates of neurons in the inferior colliculus (IC) of awake rabbits, that prevailing decoding models of sound localization (summed population activity and the population vector) fail to localize sources accurately due to heterogeneity in azimuth tuning across the population. In contrast, a maximum-likelihood decoder operating on the pattern of activity across the population of neurons in one IC accurately localized sound sources in the contralateral hemifield, consistent with lesion studies, and did so with a precision consistent with rabbit psychophysical performance. The pattern decoder also predicts behavior in response to incongruent localization cues consistent with the long-standing "duplex" theory of sound localization. We further show that the pattern decoder accurately distinguishes two concurrent, spatially separated sources from a single source, consistent with human behavior. Decoder detection of small amounts of source separation directly in front is due to neural sensitivity to the interaural decorrelation of sound, at both low and high frequencies. The distinct patterns of IC activity between single and separated sound sources thereby provide a neural correlate for the ability to segregate and localize sources in everyday, multisource environments.

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Acoustical cues for sound localization by the Mongolian gerbil, Meriones unguiculatus

Cited by 71 publications

References 45 publications

Population Coding of Interaural Time Differences in Gerbils and Barn Owls

Population Coding of Interaural Time Differences in Gerbils and Barn Owls

Behavioral sensitivity to interaural time differences in the rabbit

Decoding Sound Source Location and Separation Using Neural Population Activity Patterns

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