Temporal structure of mouse courtship vocalizations facilitates syllable labeling

Hertz, Stav; Weiner, Benjamin; Perets, Nisim; London, Michael

doi:10.1038/s42003-020-1053-7

Cited by 22 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…a sound unit separated from other sound units by silence (32), which themselves contain one or several pitch trajectories. The duration of individual pitch trajectories within a syllable emitted by adult male mice can range from 30-90ms (33,34). This range of durations is in line with the distribution of integration time constants we observed in the left ACx (Fig.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Recurrent connectivity underlies lateralized temporal processing differences in Auditory Cortex

Neophytou

Arribas

Levy

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Brain asymmetry in the sensitivity to spectrotemporal modulation is an established functional feature that underlies the perception of speech and music. Recent studies in humans suggest separable neural mechanisms must underlie these cognitively complex functions. The left Auditory Cortex (ACx) is believed to specialize in processing fast temporal components of speech sounds, and the right ACx slower components. However, the circuit features and neural computations behind these lateralized spectrotemporal processes are poorly understood. To answer these mechanistic questions we use mice, an animal model that captures some relevant features of human communication systems. In this study, we screened for circuit features that could subserve temporal integration differences between the left and right ACx. We mapped excitatory input to principal neurons in all cortical layers and found significantly stronger recurrent connections in the superficial layers of the right ACx compared to the left. We hypothesized that the underlying recurrent neural dynamics would exhibit differential characteristic timescales corresponding to their hemispheric specialization. To investigate, we recorded spike trains from awake mice and estimated the network time constants using a quasi-Bayesian method to combine evidence from multiple weak signal-to-noise ratio neurons. We found longer temporal integration windows in the right ACx compared to the left as predicted by stronger recurrent excitation. Our study shows direct evidence that stronger recurrent synaptic connections lead to longer network time scales. These findings support speech processing theories that purport asymmetric integration time constants is a crucial feature of lateralization in auditory processing.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Recurrent connectivity underlies lateralized temporal processing differences in Auditory Cortex

Neophytou

Arribas

Levy

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Both of these manipulations preserve the relative spectro-temporal relationships within each syllable, as well as the physical complexity and acoustic characteristics of the sequence, and tested whether the order of the syllables was informative to the listener. Indeed, songs from male mice have been shown to demonstrate some characteristic sequential features, with short syllables typically dominating the beginning of a vocal phrase 9,22,25,36,37 . This structure would be violated both by the syllable order randomization, and the temporal reversal of the song.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Courtship behaviour reveals temporal regularity is a critical social cue in mouse communication

Perrodin

Verzat

Bendor

2020

Preprint

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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.

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“…During social interactions these USV calls can often occur in a sequences (bouts) with short intervals between the individual calls ( Coffey et al., 2019 ). These sequences are non-random with a temporal and syntactic structure ( Hertz et al., 2020 ), that is integral to their communicative function ( Castellucci et al., 2018 ; Uematsu et al., 2007 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maternal immune activation alters the sequential structure of ultrasonic communications in male rats

Scott

Tashakori-Sabzevar

Bilkey

2021

Brain, Behavior, & Immunity - Health

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Maternal immune activation (MIA) is a risk factor for schizophrenia and many of the symptoms and neurodevelopmental changes associated with this disorder have been modelled in the rodent. While several previous studies have reported that rodent ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are affected by MIA, no previous study has examined whether MIA affects the way that individual USVs occur over time to produce vocalisation sequences. The sequential aspect of this behaviour may be particularly important because changes in sequencing mechanisms have been proposed as a core deficit in schizophrenia. The present research generates MIA with POLY I:C administered to pregnant Sprague-Dawley rat dams at GD15. Male pairs of MIA adult offspring or pairs of their saline controls were placed into a two-chamber apparatus where they were separated from each other by a perforated plexiglass barrier. USVs were recorded for a period of 10 min and automated detection and call review were used to classify short call types in the nominal 50 kHz band of social affiliative calls. Our data show that the duration of these 50-kHz USVs is longer in MIA rat pairs and the time between calls is shorter. Furthermore, the transition probability between call pairs was different in the MIA animals compared to the control group, indicating alterations in sequential behaviour. These results provide the first evidence that USV call sequencing is altered by the MIA intervention and suggest that further investigations of these temporally extended aspects of USV production are likely to reveal useful information about the mechanisms that underlie sequence generation. This is particularly important given previous research suggesting that sequencing deficits may have a significant impact on both behaviour and cognition.

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Temporal structure of mouse courtship vocalizations facilitates syllable labeling

Cited by 22 publications

References 45 publications

Recurrent connectivity underlies lateralized temporal processing differences in Auditory Cortex

Recurrent connectivity underlies lateralized temporal processing differences in Auditory Cortex

Courtship behaviour reveals temporal regularity is a critical social cue in mouse communication

Maternal immune activation alters the sequential structure of ultrasonic communications in male rats

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