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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 95/2/823    most recent 00741.2005v2 00741.2005v1 Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Web of Science (10) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Pérez-González, D. Articles by Covey, E. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Pérez-González, D. Articles by Covey, E.

Duration Selective Neurons in the Inferior Colliculus of the Rat: Topographic Distribution and Relation of Duration Sensitivity to Other Response Properties

¹Auditory Neurophysiology Unit, Laboratory for the Neurobiology of Hearing, The Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León and Faculty of Medicine, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain; and ²Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington

Submitted 14 July 2005; accepted in final form 26 September 2005

Many animals use duration to help them identify the source and meaning of a sound. Duration-sensitive neurons have been found in the auditory midbrain of mammals and amphibians, where their selectivity seems to correspond to the lengths of species-specific vocalizations. In this study, single neurons in the rat inferior colliculus (IC) were tested for sensitivity to sound duration. About one-half (54%) of the units sampled showed some form of duration selectivity. The majority of these (76%) were long-pass neurons that responded to sounds exceeding some duration threshold (range: 5–60 ms). Band-pass neurons, which only responded to a restricted range of durations, made up 13% of duration-sensitive neurons (best durations: 15–120 ms). Other units displayed short-pass (2%) or mixed (9%) response patterns. The majority of duration-sensitive neurons were localized outside the central nucleus of the IC, especially in the dorsal cortex, where more than one-half of the neurons sampled had long-pass selectivity for duration. Band-pass duration tuned neurons were only found outside the central nucleus. Characteristics of duration-sensitive neurons in the rat support the idea that this filtering arises through an interaction of excitatory and inhibitory inputs that converge in the IC. Band-pass neurons typically responded at sound offset, suggesting that their tuning is created through the same mechanisms that have been described in echolocating bats. The finding that the first-spike latencies of all long-pass neurons were longer than the shortest duration to which they responded supports the idea that they receive transient inhibition before, or simultaneously with, a sustained excitatory input. The ranges of selectivity in rat IC neurons are within the range of durations of rat vocalizations. These data suggest that a population of neurons in the rat IC have evolved to transmit information about behaviorally relevant sound durations using mechanisms that are common to all mammals, with an emphasis on long-pass tuning characteristics.

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