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1Biomedical Engineering Program and 2Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut 06269-2157; and 3W. M. Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143
Submitted 25 September 2002; accepted in final form 3 March 2003
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ABSTRACT |
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60% of
collicular neurons are well described by a time-frequency separable Gabor STRF
model, whereas the remaining neurons exhibited obliquely oriented or multiple
excitatory/inhibitory subfields that require a nonseparable Gabor fitting
procedure. Parametric analysis reveals distinct spectro-temporal tradeoffs in
receptive field size and modulation filtering resolution. Comparisons between
an identical model used to study spatio-temporal integration areas of visual
neurons further shows that auditory and visual STRFs share numerous structural
properties. We then use the Gabor STRF model to compare quantitatively
receptive field properties of contra- and ipsilateral inputs to the ICC. We
show that most interaural STRF parameters are highly correlated bilaterally.
However, the spectral and temporal phases of ipsi- and contralateral STRFs
often differ significantly. This suggests that activity originating from each
ear share various spectro-temporal response properties such as their temporal
delay, bandwidth, and center frequency but have shifted or interleaved
patterns of excitation and inhibition. These differences in converging
monaural receptive fields expand binaural processing capacity beyond
interaural time and intensity aspects and may enable colliculus neurons to
detect disparities in the spectro-temporal composition of the binaural
input. |
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INTRODUCTION |
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;
Irvine and Gago 1990;
Krishna and Semple 2000;
Kuwada et al. 1997;
Langner and Schreiner 1988;
Ramachandran et al. 1999;
Rees and Møller 1983).
Although numerous studies have evaluated the response characteristics to
structurally simple stimuli, only a handful of studies have analyzed the joint
spectral, temporal, and/or binaural receptive field arrangements responsible
for this response diversity (Depireux et
al. 2001; Miller et al.
2002; Sen et al.
2001).
Auditory receptive fields are typically derived with isolated pure tones
that are presented at varying frequencies and intensities or by measuring
neural sensitivity to narrowband time-varying stimuli (e.g.,
Krishna and Semple 2000;
Langner and Schreiner 1988;
Ramachandran et al. 1999;
Rees and Møller 1983).
Recently, the auditory spectro-temporal receptive field (STRF), a linear model
representation of the integration area of a neuron, has expanded these
classical methods. The auditory STRF has the advantage that it simultaneously
describes spectral and temporal stimulus attributes that preferentially
activate a neuron and can be used to identify the spectral arrangement and
temporal dynamics of neural excitation and inhibition of a neuron during
dynamic broadband stimulation (Aersten et
al. 1980; deCharms et al.
1998; Depireux 2001;
Escabí and Schreiner
2002; Klein et al.
2000; Miller et al.
2002; Nelken et al.
1997; Sen et al.
2001; Theunissen et al.
2000). In particular, the STRF technique is useful for predicting
neuronal response patterns to complex auditory stimuli, including natural
sounds (Aersten et al. 1980;
Klein et al. 2000;
Sen et al. 2001;
Theunissen et al. 2000), and
can accurately account for spatial selectivity profiles that contribute to
sound localization (Schnupp et al.
2001).
In the visual system, the direct counterpart of the auditory STRF is the
spatio-temporal receptive field. Here the spectral dimension (which extends
along the primary sensory epithelium receptor surface of the cochlea) is
replaced by spatial dimensions along the retinal sensory epithelium
(Cai et al. 1997;
DeAngelis et al. 1995;
De Valois and Cottaris 1998;
Shamma 2001). Visual
neurophysiologists have used Gabor and Gamma functions as quantitative
descriptors of visual STRFs (Cai et al.
1997; DeAngelis et al.
1993a,
1999; Jones and Palmer
1987a,b).
Advantages for fitting visual STRFs by quantitative functions include:
improved estimates of the spatio-temporal structure of visual response areas
and the removal of estimation noise. Furthermore, these model STRFs can be
used to study the arrangements of excitatory and inhibitory neural inputs and
to extract physiologically meaningful parameters from neural data (DeAngelis
et al. 1993a,
1999). Although it has been
suggested that auditory and visual STRFs have remarkably similar time-varying
structure (deCharms et al.
1998; Shamma
2001), only a few studies have quantitatively evaluated the
spectro-temporal structure of auditory STRFs
(Depireux et al. 2001;
Escabí and Schreiner
2002; Miller et al.
2002; Sen et al.
2001). However, these studies did not quantitatively compare the
structure of the auditory STRF directly with their visual counterpart.
In this study, we present a time-frequency Gabor STRF model to fit auditory
STRFs in the central nucleus of cat's inferior colliculus (ICC). Spectral and
temporal Gabor functions are used to model spectral receptive field (SRF) and
temporal receptive field (TRF) profiles of ICC neurons, respectively. Each
STRF is then fitted by a weighted sum of products of time-frequency separable
Gabor functions. From the definition of a Gabor function, nine physiologically
meaningful parameters are extracted: the center frequency, the best ripple
density, the best temporal modulation frequency, the peak latency, the
bandwidth of the SRF profile, the response duration, the response strength,
and the spectral and temporal phases. These parameters are used to quantify
spectral, temporal, and time-frequency response characteristics to dynamic
moving ripple stimuli (Escabí and
Schreiner 2002; Miller et al.
2002). This Gabor STRF model is a direct extension of receptive
field models used to study the structure of visual receptive fields in the
primary visual cortex (DeAngelis et al.
1993a,b,
1999) and provides a basis for
comparing the structure of auditory and visual STRFs. In particular, we apply
this methodology to compare STRF properties of contra- and ipsilateral inputs
to ICC neurons. We demonstrate specific aural STRF differences that suggest
binaural filtering mechanisms beyond intra-aural time and level
sensitivity.
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MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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Physiological recording methods have been presented in detail elsewhere
(Escabí and Schreiner
2002). Briefly, cats (n = 4) were initially anesthetized
with a mixture of ketamine HCl (10 mg/kg) and acepromazine (0.28 mg/kg im). A
surgical state of anesthesia was induced with 30 mg/kg pentobarbital
sodium (Nembutal) and maintained throughout the surgery with supplements via
an intravenous infusion line. Body temperature was measured and maintained at
37.5°C. The overlying cerebrum and part of the bony tentorium was
removed to expose the ICC via a dorsal approach. During the unit recordings,
animals were maintained in an areflexive state via continuous infusion of
ketamine (2–4 mg · kg–1 ·
h–1) and diazepam (0.4–1 mg ·
kg–1 · h–1) in
lactated Ringer solution (1–4 mg ·
kg–1 · h–1).
The infusion rate was adjusted according to physiologic criteria (heart rate,
breathing rate, temperature, and peripheral reflexes). All surgical methods
and experiment procedures follow National Institutes of Health and U.S.
Department of Agriculture guidelines.
Neural data was acquired from n = 99 single units in the ICC with
parylen-coated tungsten microelectrodes (Microprobe, Potomac, MD; 1–3
M
at 1 kHz) that were advanced into the central nucleus with a
hydraulic microdrive (David Kopft Instruments, Tujunga, CA). Action potential
traces were recorded onto a digital audio tape (Cygnus Technologies CDAT16;
Delaware Water Gap, PA) at a sampling rate of 24.0 kHz (41.7-µs resolution)
and spike sorted off-line with a Bayesian spike sorting algorithm
(Lewicki 1994).
Acoustic stimuli
Dynamic moving ripple (DMR) stimuli
(Escabí and Schreiner
2002) were presented with the animal in a sound-shielded chamber
(IAC, Bronx, NY) with stimuli delivered via a closed, binaural speaker system
(electrostatic diaphragms from Stax). The Dynamic Moving Ripple sound is
specifically designed to dynamically activate the primary sensory epithelium
and to probe the physiologically relevant range of spectral and temporal
stimulus modulations of neurons in an unbiased fashion. Sounds were presented
binaurally with an independent sound sequence to each ear—from which
independent contra- and ipsi-lateral STRFs were computed via spike-triggered
averaging (Escabí and Schreiner
2002).
In three experiments, the DMR stimulus was presented for a period of
10–20 min (Escabí and
Schreiner, 2002). In one experiment, a two-repeat 4-min sequence
of the DMR (8 min total) was presented. In all experiments, stimuli covered
the same range of spectral and temporal parameters and were presented at
30–70 dB above the neurons response threshold.
Gabor STRF model
STRFs were decomposed into a superposition of time-frequency separable
functions from which we could model and fit each component by a
spectro-temporal Gabor function (product of Gaussian and cosine;
Fig. 3). Measured STRFs were
first decomposed using a singular value decomposition (SVD)
(Depireux et al. 2001;
Press et al. 1995;
Theunissen et al. 2000) into a
sum of separable STRF components (STRFi)
 | (1) |
i, in descending rank order according to energy;
and * denotes the Hermitian transpose. Each STRF component,
STRFi, is obtained by the vector product
 | (2) |
i is the ith singular value of
STRF(t, x) and determines the energy of the ith STRF
component. ui and vi
are the ith unitary orthogonal vectors of U and V,
respectively. Conceptually, these correspond to the spectral and temporal
receptive field profiles of each component STRF (e.g., shown on the
top and right of Fig. 3,
B and C). The dominant spectral and temporal
receptive field profiles, u1 and v1,
account for 80% of the total STRF energy, and we therefore use these to
quantify spectral and temporal response characteristics throughout.
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According to the SVD procedure, every STRFi component
is time-frequency separable (although the entire STRF may be nonseparable).
Therefore each component can be modeled by the product of a spectral and a
temporal waveform, which we approximate by a Gabor function. Thus the fitted
STRF model is expressed as a weighted sum of a finite set of N of
statistically significant separable Gabor components (typically, N =
1 or 2)
 | (3) |
). Level of noise
Auditory STRFs are estimated from real neural data by a spike-triggered
average method (Escabí and
Schreiner 2002) that is inherently noisy. Measurement noise
corresponds to random deviations from the expected STRF that would result from
an infinite amount of averaging. These variations result from unexpected
variations in the neural response and from finite data averaging due to the
finite experiment recording periods (Klein
et al. 2000; Theunissen 2000). Therefore to minimize the effects
of noise, it is necessary to consider only those independent time-frequency
components of the Gabor STRF model that significantly contribute to the STRF's
energy and structure.
To determine the maximum number of independent dimensions of the STRF that
contribute to its structure (N in Eq. 3), it is essential to
quantify the STRF noise level. Singular values that exceed the measured noise
level typically contribute significantly to the neural response and should
therefore be incorporated into the Gabor STRF model; alternately, singular
values that fall below the noise level contribute largely to the noise and can
therefore be ignored. A significant noise level (P < 0.01) was
determined empirically via a bootstrap STRF re-estimation procedure for a
random Poisson firing neuron of identical spike rate as the neuron under
investigation. Twenty-five randomly constructed STRFs,
STRFr (e.g., Fig.
4A), were simulated by correlating a random Poisson spike
train of firing rate, 
, with the dynamic moving ripple noise stimulus.
The first singular value (r1) of each
random-STRF, STRFr, was obtained directly by performing a
SVD. For each of the 25 trials (shown by vertical red circles in
Fig. 4B), the measured
level of noise was randomly distributed. Therefore the desired threshold noise
level for a specific spike rate (solid line in
Fig. 4B) was
determined as the sum of the mean of r1
and 2.57 times its SD (P < 0.01). The mean ± SD of
r1 were calculated from the 25 simulated
samples by a bootstrap resampling technique
(Efron and Tibshirani 1993).
All first-order STRFs considered here were above the estimated noise
level.
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Similarity index
The Gabor STRF model can potentially account for much of the structure of collicular receptive fields, however, the utility of the model needs to be quantitatively evaluated. We devised three metrics to validate the goodness of fit of the model. We evaluated the goodness of fit of SRF and TRF profiles independently and for the entire STRF.
To compare the receptive field structure of the model and data, we devised
the spectral similarity index (SIs), temporal similarity
index (SIt) and spectro-temporal similarity index (SI).
The spectral SI, SIs, accounts for differences in shape
between original and model SRF profiles; SIt is used to
compare the original and model TRF profiles; the spectro-temporal SI, SI,
measures shape differences between original and model STRFs. Individually
these metrics correspond to a correlation analysis performed between the model
and original data (DeAngelis et al.
1999; Escabí and
Schreiner 2002; Miller et al.
2002) and can be expressed as
 | (4) |
 | (5) |
 | (6) |
,
corresponds to the vector correlation, and || ·
|| designates the vector norm operator. Because the STRF is formally
defined by a two-dimensional matrix of spectral and temporal samples, Eq.
6 could not be evaluated directly since it requires vector inputs.
Therefore the statistically significant samples of the STRF that exceeded a
significance criterion of P < 0.002, were converted into a
unidimensional vector, from which the SI was determined using Eq. 6
(Escabí and Schreiner
2002). Because all three similarity indices are effectively correlation coefficients between the real data and model waveforms, they assume a value of one whenever the waveforms inside their arguments are identical in shape, zero if the waveforms have nothing in common and negative one if the waveforms have identical shapes but differ by a negative sign.
Normalized mean square error
A fourth metric was defined that quantifies the relative difference in
energy between the fitted (STRFm) and the measured STRF
(STRF). The normalized mean square error (MSE) is defined as the energy of the
difference STRF normalized by the energy of a measured STRF
(DeAngelis et al. 1999)
 | (7) |
Temporal asymmetry index
Initial evaluation of the temporal receptive field envelope revealed that
timing profiles of ICC neurons are characterized by sharp transient onset. We
therefore quantitatively evaluated the structure of the temporal response
envelope. To evaluate the degree of temporal asymmetry in the TRF profile, we
define an asymmetry index (
t) as the skewness of
the temporal envelope (Bliss
1967)
 | (8) |
t significantly less than 0 indicates that the
TRF profile is skewed to the right; and a t
significantly greater than 0 indicates the TRF profile is skewed to the
left. Separability index
An inherent aspect of the Gabor model is that it is composed of multiple
receptive field components, each of which is a time-frequency separable
function. If the receptive field contains only one singular value, the
receptive field is time-frequency separable; that is, it can be described by a
multiplicative product of a temporal and spectral receptive field profile as
in Eq. 2. Hypothetically, such a neuron would encode spectral and
temporal information independently. If, alternately, the receptive field has
multiple significant singular values, the receptive field will exhibit
time-frequency inseparable structure. This can manifest as obliquely oriented
STRF features or multiple asymmetrically aligned excitatory and inhibitory
receptive field subregions. Neurons with such receptive field arrangements
most likely prefer sound stimuli with dynamically changing frequency
components, and, consequently, the spectral and temporal dimensions for such
neurons cannot be treated independently of each other. This effect becomes
more pronounced if the higher-order singular values account for a large
proportion of the receptive field energy. Thus we can define a separability
index by considering the proportion of energy provided by first singular value
in relationship to the cumulative energy of the higher-order singular values.
We define the separability index (d) as
 | (9) |
1 and i are the first- and
higher-order singular values of the STRF (Eq. 1), and N is
the number of statistically significant singular values used in the Gabor STRF
model. Conceptually, d is defined as the normalized
energy of the first singular value (relative to the total energy of the model
STRF) minus the normalized energy of the higher-order singular values.
Separability index values range from 0 to 1; where 1 corresponds to a
perfectly separable STRF and values close to zero designate a highly
inseparable receptive field arrangement. |
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RESULTS |
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). It is characterized by a dynamically changing spectrum with
widespread spectral fluctuations over a broad range of resolutions (0–4
cycles/octave). Superimposed on this spectral variability, the DMR exhibits
temporal energy fluctuations over a wide range of modulation frequencies:
0–350 Hz. Its statistically unbiased properties makes the stimulus
directly applicable for the study of auditory receptive fields during dynamic
stimulation. We combined STRF measurement techniques with a spectro-temporal
Gabor model to study the structural properties and binaural arrangements of
inferior colliculus STRFs. This model allows us to extract nine
physiologically meaningful STRF parameters. To determine whether the Gabor
model is well suited for describing auditory STRFs, we first fitted each
contralateral STRF to the Gabor model and found the optimal parameters of each
receptive field. Next, we independently characterized spectral and temporal
receptive field profiles as well as the arrangement of excitation and
inhibition of each neuron in order to determine how these dimensions
contribute to the STRF. Finally, we use the Gabor STRF model to characterize
and compare ipsi- and contralateral receptive field arrangements. By studying
the spectral and temporal parameters of the contralateral and ipsilateral
STRFs, we identify how the spectro-temporal arrangement of excitation and
inhibition contribute to the formation of binaural response properties seen in
the inferior colliculus. Structure of the spectral receptive field
The spectral receptive field (SRF) profile is a model representation of the
frequency integration area of auditory neurons
(Calhoun and Schreiner 1998;
Kowalski et al. 1996;
Miller et al. 2002;
Schreiner and Calhoun 1994;
Versnell and Shamma 1998). This descriptor can be used to quantify neuronal
responses to sounds with complex spectra (such as for formant transitions in
speech and spectral resonances in animal vocalizations) and to study the
receptive field arrangement of excitation and inhibition along the
cochleotopic dimension of the stimulus. Most studies using this descriptor
largely focused on qualitatively identifying general integration properties
(such as the arrangement of spectral excitation and inhibition) and only for
stimuli with static temporal characteristics. By slicing the STRF at a fixed
latency (solid lines in Fig. 1, B
and C) we can study the dynamic behavior of the SRF
profile for complex stimuli with time-varying structure. Specifically, we
would like to identify a model representation of the STRF that quantitatively
captures the general characteristics of the SRF profile and its associated
dynamics. When the latency is >40 ms, there is no discernible SRF structure
for the STRF shown in Fig.
1A. At shorter latencies, however, SRF profiles can
exhibit pure excitation, inhibition, or an alternating arrangement of
excitation and inhibition. The phase of SRF profiles changes continuously so
that the excitatory bandwidths and center frequencies change with increasing
latency. Consequently, there is no direct analytic equation to model the SRF
profile at all latencies.
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One step toward solving this problem is to break up the SRF profile into an
envelope and a carrier component via the Hilbert transform
(Cai et al. 1997;
Daugman 1985; DeAngelis et al.
1993a,
1999; Jones and Palmer
1987a,b;
Marcelja 1980). The envelope,
Es(x), is computed by the vector sum of
the SRF profile, SRF(x), and its Hilbert transform,
H[SRF(x)]
 | (10) |
Although the SRF profile depends strongly on the latency of the STRF, the
spectral envelope assumes a nearly invariant structure at all latencies. The
envelopes of the SRF profiles (dashed lines in
Fig. 1, B and
C) are approximately Gaussian functions and can be
conveniently defined by their bandwidth and center frequency. The bandwidth of
the SRF profile is defined as the width of the envelope at a response level
that is 1/e relative to the absolute maximum of the envelope,
capturing 85% of the energy in a Gaussian the SRF envelope. The center
frequency is defined as the peak value of the spectral envelope. As expected
for the SRF profiles of Fig. 1, B
and C, the measured bandwidths and center frequencies
along the excitatory and inhibitory cross-sections are in close agreement:
bandwidth = 1.00 and 0.89 octaves (octave is defined as log2
(f/fr), fr
= 500 Hz is a reference frequency), respectively; center frequency = 4.37 and
4.42 octaves.
The spectral receptive field structure was modeled at each time point as
the product of a Gaussian envelope and a sinusoidal carrier. Qualitatively,
the Gaussian function defines the center and extent over which the neuron
integrates spectral information, whereas the sinusoid carrier component is
necessary to account for the interleaved patterns of excitation and
inhibition. This functional form of the SRF profile, a Gabor function, is a
direct extension of the receptive field models used to study spatio-temporal
integration in the visual system (Cai et
al. 1997; Daugman
1985; DeAngelis et al.
1993a; Jones and Palmer
1987a,b;
Marcelja 1980). The Gabor
function can capture numerous receptive field aspects and can be used to
extract physiologically meaningful parameters directly from the neuron's
receptive field.
At each time point, the SRF profile was fitted by a Gabor function taking
the general form
 | (11) |
0, and P are
free parameters. The parameter K models the strength of the spectral
response in unit of spikes · s–1 ·
dB–1. x0 is the center
frequency or the central position of the SRF envelope in units of octaves; BW
is the bandwidth of the SRF which accounts for the spectral extent of the
receptive field; 0 is the best ripple density (units of
cycles/octaves) that models the distance between the excitatory and inhibitory
lobes; P is the spectral phase of the SRF profile with respect to the
center frequency of the Gaussian envelope. This parameter accounts for the
alignment of excitation and inhibition relative to the peak of the SRF
envelope. The optimal parameters in Eq. 11 can be obtained by
minimizing the mean square error between the Gabor function and the measured
SRF profile (Press et al.
1995). Example SRF profiles
(Fig. 1, D and
E) and optimal-fitted results are shown in
Fig. 1, D and
E at two latencies of the STRF. Fitted profiles
(continuous red lines) and the measured SRF profiles (continuous black lines)
are in close agreement. Structure of the temporal receptive field
The structure of the temporal receptive field (TRF) profile was analyzed using a similar functional descriptor as for the SRF profile. The TRF profile obtained by slicing through the STRF at a particular frequency has an alternating arrangement of excitation and inhibition. The TRF profiles of collicular neurons typically have short excitation (or inhibition) followed by long inhibition (or excitation) (e.g., solid line in Fig. 2B), and their envelopes are, therefore, not symmetric about the peak point. For example, the envelope of the TRF profile shown by the dashed line in Fig. 2B is not symmetric about the peak of the temporal envelope (vertical line) because it has a sharp onset and slower off-response. Because of this temporal asymmetry, the TRF profile is not well described by a symmetric Gabor function.
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The degree of temporal asymmetry was measured for all contralateral
responsive neurons in our ICC sample (n = 93 of 99) with an asymmetry
index, t (see METHODS). The TRF profile
in Fig. 2B is skewed
to the left and it therefore has a positive asymmetry index (0.935).
Figure 2C (blue
histogram) illustrates the distribution of asymmetry indices, obtained for the
dynamic moving ripple sound. The population distribution shows a bias toward
positive values (mean ± SD: 1.93 ± 1.64; observed range:
0.30–9.7; t-test, P < 0.001), indicating that the temporal
envelopes and TRF profiles are skewed toward zero delay. Accordingly, the
temporal responses profiles of most ICC neurons exhibit a short primary
response (excitatory or inhibitory) followed by a long secondary response of
opposite sign (inhibitory or excitatory, respectively). Such timing
differences between the onset and offset of the receptive field are consistent
with asymmetric preferences to ramped auditory stimuli observed both
physiologically (Lu et al.
2001) and psychoacoustically
(Neuhoff 1998; Patterson
1994).
Considering the observed temporal asymmetry, we modified the Gabor model so
that it accounts for the observed timing profiles by incorporating a
time-warping factor that skews the time axis and allows us to model the TRF
with a symmetric Gabor function (DeAngelis
et al. 1999). The time-skewing function was defined as
 | (12) |
is the skewing factor (observed range: 0.45–0.68),
t is the uncompressed time-axis, and T is the corrected
temporal axis. The TRF profile is then fitted by a Gabor function of the form
 | (13) |
). An
example fitted TRF profiles is illustrated in
Fig. 2D. The fitted
TRF profile (solid red line) captures the structure of the measured TRF
profile (solid black line). Further analysis of the entire population confirms
the validity of the temporal receptive field asymmetry and the appropriateness
of the time-skewing parameter. We recomputed the asymmetry index of all
neurons using the time-warped TRF profiles
(Fig. 2C; red
histogram), which resemble symmetric Gaussian functions (not shown). The
time-warped asymmetry indices were near zero (time-warped mean ± SE =
0.083 ± 0.014) and were significantly smaller than for the unwarped TRF
(time-unwarped, 1.93 ± 0.17; paired t-test, P = 1).
Thus the time-warping factor accurately accounts for the observed temporal
receptive field asymmetry observed for all ICC neurons. Gabor-STRF model
The analysis of the TRF and SRF profiles shows that the temporal and spectral receptive field dimensions of auditory neurons can in principle be independently approximated by temporal and spectral Gabor functions. Does this approach generalize for the STRF? Can we model the auditory STRF by a product of Gabor TRF and SRF profiles? If so, what conditions must be satisfied?
In terms of time and frequency response interactions, auditory STRFs can be
divided into two fundamental types: separable and inseparable
(Adelson and Bergen 1985;
DeAngelis et al. 1995;
Depireux et al. 2001;
Miller et al. 2002;
Reid et al. 1991;
Sen et al. 2001).
Time-frequency separability of the STRF occurs whenever the STRF can be
described as the product of a SRF profile and a TRF profile, in which case the
SRF and TRF profiles are independent of each other. If a separable STRF is
taken into the Fourier domain, the ripple transfer function (RTF) is symmetric
about the zero temporal modulation frequency axis
(Depireux et al. 2001;
Escabí and Schreiner
2002; Miller et al.
2002; Sen et al.
2001). However, inseparable STRFs cannot be broken down into two
independent time and frequency functions. The representations of these STRFs
in the Fourier domain can therefore show conspicuous asymmetries
(Depireux et al. 2001;
Escabí and Schreiner
2002; Miller et al.
2002; Sen et al.
2001).
Many auditory STRFs have some inseparable features, including, time-frequency oriented subregions or multiple asymmetrically aligned excitatory and inhibitory receptive field components. Such structural features may be necessary to encode specific structural components in natural signals, such as consonant-vowel transitions in speech, and to dynamically track changes in the frequency spectrum of complex signals, such as frequency-modulated sweeps.
In the previous discussions, we showed that it is relatively easy to model
auditory receptive fields by independent Gabor profiles (spectral and
temporal) if they are time-frequency separable; however, this procedure is not
directly applicable for inseparable STRFs. One way to overcome this difficulty
is to first decompose an inseparable STRF
(Fig. 3A) into several
separable STRF components (Fig. 3,
B and C). Each of the separable STRF components
can then be fitted by a time-frequency separable Gabor
(Fig. 3, D and
E). Finally, the fitted resultant STRF is approximated by
the sum of each separable fitted STRF component (see METHODS,
Eq. 3; Fig. 3). This
procedure is realized using a singular value decomposition (SVD) to determine
numerically the smallest number of independent time-frequency dimensions of
the STRF (Depireux 2001; Press et al.
1995; Theunissen 2000).
We determined the number of independent STRF components required for the
Gabor STRF model numerically by finding those components that exceed a
significance criterion of P < 0.01
(Fig. 4C).
Figure 4C describes
the relationship between the measured spike rate and the level of the noise
for dynamic moving ripples. The level of the noise increases as function of
the spike rate. The magnitude of the first (red *), second (blue 
), and
third (green 
) STRF singular values are plotted against the
noise-threshold level; of which 100% of the first STRF components exceeded the
noise level. By comparison, only 39.7% of the second, 7.5% of the third STRF
components exceeded the significance criterion (solid black line in
Fig. 4, B and
C). The total energy contribution of the first and second
singular value components accounts for 78.9 ± 15.7 and 6.2 ±
5.0% of the STRF energy, respectively. The third component, however, only
contributes 2.3 ± 1.8% of the total STRF energy. Therefore the first
and second singular values are typically sufficient for describing the
spectro-temporal structure of ICC receptive fields.
Validating the Gabor STRF model
As with any model, its overall utility ultimately depends on its ability to
account for observed empirical results. Specifically, we are interested in
determining how well the separable Gabor STRF model accounts for receptive
field structure of inferior colliculus neurons. Does the model adequately
account for spectral and/or temporal receptive field structures? If so, how
well does it account for joint spectro-temporal receptive field
characteristics? We devised four metrics to independently quantify the
spectral, temporal, and spectro-temporal goodness of fit of the model.
Differences in receptive field shape between the model and neural data were
quantified individually for the SRF and TRF profiles as well as for the STRF.
The spectral similarity index (SIs), temporal similarity
index (SIt), and spectro-temporal similarity index (SI)
each independently measure how well the model accounts for the structure of
the SRF, TRF, and STRF, respectively. Each SI is equivalent to a correlation
coefficient between the data and model, and, therefore, they assume numerical
values between negative and positive one
(DeAngelis et al. 1999;
Escabí and Schreiner
2002; Miller et al.
2002). Errors due to energy differences between the model and data
were characterized with an energy error metric—which we computed as a
normalized mean square error (MSE; see METHODS) from the residual
errors (difference between Gabor STRF model and the original STRF;
Fig. 5, third column). This
metric assumes values between zero and one, where zero indicates that the
model provides a perfect fit and a value of one is indicative of a poor
fit.
|
Figure 5 illustrates example fits of the STRF Gabor model of five ICC neurons and the residual errors between the model and data (third column). In most instances, the model accounts for the spectral, temporal, and spectro-temporal receptive field structure exceptionally well. For instance, the measured SI values (spectral SI = 0.992; temporal SI = 0.992; spectro-temporal SI = 0.967) and MSE (0.043) show that a strongly nonseparable STRF (Fig. 5A; separability index = 0.692) can be adequately fit by the model. Not surprisingly, the structure of separable STRFs (Fig. 5C) is easily captured by the model (spectral SI = 0.993; temporal SI = 0.966; spectro-temporal SI = 0.976; MSE = 0.022); however, the number of STRF components required to fit a separable STRF is typically lower than for a nonseparable STRF (correlation between number of components and separability index: r = –0.679 ± 0.077, P < 0.001).
The example STRFs of Fig. 5, A–C, were exceptionally clean with little additive noise. Other neurons had higher levels of noise (Fig. 5D), and yet, the model was able to account for their STRF structure (spectral SI = 0.955; temporal SI = 0.975; spectro-temporal SI = 0.941; MSE = 0.079).
Although the model was able to account for the structure of many neurons, it could not fit all receptive field structures. The neuron of Fig. 5E, for example, has multiple excitatory peaks that are displaced along the spectral axis. The measured SI values and MSE (spectral SI = 0.857; temporal SI = 0.970; spectro-temporal SI = 0.762; MSE = 0.434) indicate that the model accounts reasonably well for the temporal RF structure, which has a simple on-off TRF profile; however, the model can not fully account for the multiple excitatory spectral peaks observed in the original SRF. This happens because the spectral oscillations of the STRF are strictly positive valued, whereas the Gabor model requires oscillatory components with negative and positive values. Accordingly, the model fails to account for the STRF structure because of its inability to model the SRF profile of the neuron.
The distribution for the three-similarity indices and the normalized MSE of
all neurons are illustrated in Fig.
6. Overall the Gabor STRF model fully accounts for much of the
spectral, temporal, and spectro-temporal structure of inferior colliculus
neurons. In both instances, the mean spectral and temporal SIs
(Fig. 6, A and
B) are close to unity (0.938 ± 0.088 and 0.933
± 0.075, respectively), suggesting that the shapes of the TRF and SRF
profiles are readily accounted for by the Gabor model. Furthermore, the
spectral and temporal SIs are not significantly different (paired
t-test, P > 0.57), indicating that Gabor TRF and SRF
models are equally well suited for describing the temporal and spectral
receptive field profiles. The mean value of the spectro-temporal SI (0.846
± 0.125; Fig.
6C) is lower than spectral and temporal SI (paired
t-test; P < 0.001 and P < 0.001,
respectively). This reduction in SI is accounted for by the fact that
independent multiplicative errors are propagated from the SRF and TRF profiles
to the STRF in the model, leading to a reduction in the spectro-temporal SI
(using the spectral and temporal SI, the expected spectro-temporal SI assuming
independent profiles is 0.938 x 0.933 = 0.875). Finally, the residual
errors of the model (Fig.
6D) are typically small, as suggested by the MSE energy
error metric (mean ± SD = 0.185 ± 0.126), and were typically not
significantly different from random noise (
2 test; P
< 0.01 for 58 of 93 neurons; critical value,
= 36.2).
|
Spectral response preferences
Spectral response preferences of auditory neurons are typically determined
with isolated pure-tones of varying frequency. The SRF is an extension of the
methods used to study frequency response preferences using sound stimuli with
spectral structure (Kowalski et al.
1996; Schreiner and Calhoun
1994; Versnel and Shamma
1998). This descriptor allows us to study spectral integration
properties of single neurons to dynamic broadband sounds with a rich spectral
structure. Spectral selectivity is captured by four parameters of the Gabor
function SRF (Eq. 11)— center frequency
(x0), SRF bandwidth (BW), best ripple density
(0), and spectral phase (P). The center frequency
and bandwidth determine the central location and width of the SRF profile; the
best ripple density determines the number of excitatory or inhibitory peaks in
the SRF, and the spectral phase determines their alignment relative to the
center frequency. Individually, each of these parameters reflects structural
properties of the neuronal response area. The center frequency determines the
central position of the SRF, whereas the bandwidth determines its spectral
extent or selectivity. The ripple density accounts for the interleaving
pattern of excitation and inhibition observed in many neurons, whereas the
spectral phase determines the exact position of the excitatory and inhibitory
SRF subregions.
Due to some frequency bias in the sampling of ICC, the contralateral
receptive field of the studied neurons covered a range of center frequencies
from 1.47 to 5.3 oct. (between 1.393 and 20 kHz)— of which 64.5% were
located in the range from 4 to 5 octaves (between 8 and 16 kHz;
Fig. 7A). While the
center frequency of the neuron determines the position along the primary
sensory epithelium that preferentially activates the neuron, the spectral
bandwidth accounts for the range of frequencies over which the neuron
integrates spectral information, including both excitatory and inhibitory
features. SRF bandwidths ranged from 0.14 to 4.8 octaves—although most
neurons had bandwidths below 2.0 octaves (93%). The SRF bandwidth follows
a unimodal distribution with mean 0.988 octaves and median 0.654 octaves
(Fig. 7C).
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Auditory neurons can also respond selectively to oscillatory patterns of
the stimulus spectrum (Kowalski et al.
1996; Schreiner and Calhoun
1994). Such selectivity arises via alternating excitatory and
inhibitory subfields of the SRF profile. These excitatory and inhibitory RF
features must overlap on and off features of the stimulus spectrum for the
neuron to respond. Therefore such spectral selectivity is reflected in the SRF
profile by alternating on and off subfields of the SRF profile, analogous to
spatial grating selectivity in the visual system
(Cai et al. 1997; DeAngelis et
al. 1995,
1999). This form of spectral
selectivity is captured by the Gabor model in the best ripple density
parameter. The ripple density (units of cycles/octave) represents the number
of spectral peaks in the stimulus spectrum existing over an octave range of
frequencies. The best ripple density is defined as the number of stimulus
spectral peaks that produces a maximal neural response. Alternately, it can
also be thought of as the number of interleaved excitatory and inhibitory
subunits of the SRF existing over a single octave
(Escabí and Schreiner
2002; Klein et al.
2000; Miller et al.
2002; Schreiner and Calhoun
1994). Most neurons in our sample preferred low ripple densities
(Fig. 7B; mean = 0.609
cycles/octave; median = 0.406 cycles/octave), indicating that they preferred
broad spectral features of the dynamic moving ripple sound. The range of best
ripple densities extended from nearly 0 (0.022 cycles/octave) to 2.113
cycles/octave although all neurons were tested up to 4 cycles/octave.
Finally, the spectral phase of the SRF profile determines the alignment of excitatory and inhibitory features relative to the center frequency of the neuron. Conceptually, a spectral phase shift corresponds to a frequency shift of the actual SRF maximum (not the envelope peak or center frequency). A positive phase value shifts the maximum of the spectral profile to lower frequencies; a negative phase shifts the SRF maximum to higher frequencies. Most of the STRFs (78.5%) have positive spectral phases, indicating that neurons favor lower frequencies than the center frequency (Fig. 7D).
The SRF profile allows us to study its arrangement in terms of spectral
excitation and inhibition. The behavior of each neuron can also be interpreted
directly in the ripple density or frequency domain
(Kowalski et al. 1996;
Miller et al. 2002;
Schreiner and Calhoun 1994).
To do this, the SRF is converted into a spectral modulation transfer function
(sMTF). The sMTF measures the neurons response (spikes ·
s–1 · dB–1) as
a function of the applied ripple density. Using the Gabor model representation
of the SRF profile (Eq. 11), the corresponding sMTF is obtained by
applying a Fourier transform magnitude (FTM) to the SRF profile
 | (14) |
. The
sMTF acquires the structure of a Gaussian function with the center
0 and standard deviation
. The bandwidth of the
sMTF is defined as the width of the sMTF that accounts for 85% of the total
energy under the Gaussian curve. This parameter determines the range of
spectral oscillations (cycles/octave) in a stimulus that can potentially
activate the neuron. According to this criterion, the tail points at the level
of 1/e of the Gaussian sMTF peak value delineate the bandwidth of the
sMTF. Compared to the bandwidth of the SRF profile, the bandwidth of the sMTF
(4/
/BW) is inversely proportional to the bandwidth of the SRF profile
(BW). Figure 8, A–C, shows representative sMTFs of three single neurons in the ICC. To facilitate comparisons, each sMTF was normalized so that their total energy is equal to one; — shows the normalized sMTFs from Eq. 14, - - - corresponds to the normalized sMTFs obtained directly from measured SRF profiles. The Gabor sMTF model (Eq. 14) accounts for the structure and energy of the actual sMTFs quite well as depicted by the — and - - - in Fig. 8.
|
Neurons were individually classified according to their spectral filtering
characteristics. These can, in theory, take the form of lowpass, bandpass, or
highpass filtering response pattern. Neurons in our sample only exhibited
lowpass (Fig. 8A) and
bandpass (Fig. 8, B and
C) spectral selectivity. The criterion for classifying
each neuron from the sMTF consisted of comparing the sMTF bandwidth of each
neuron in relation to its best ripple density. Specifically, we required that
the measured best ripple density (0) be greater than half
the sMTF bandwidth for bandpass neurons. This requirement guarantees that
bandpass neurons have a residual DC level response of less than half the sMTF
peak magnitude; whereas lowpass neurons will have a significant DC response
with >50% of the peak response magnitude.
Figure 8A illustrates
this procedure for a typical sMTF with lowpass selectivity (same as
Fig. 5A), which shows
a nonoscillatory on-spectral response pattern. Its sMTF indicates that the
structure of the STRF along the spectral dimension is dominantly excitatory or
inhibitory. A neuron with bandpass filter characteristics is illustrated by
the examples of Fig.
8C (same as Fig.
5B). This neuron has an SRF with strong alternating
excitatory and inhibitory subfields. An intermediate scenario occurs for the
neuron of Fig. 8B
(same as Fig. 2A),
which shows a significant DC level response in the sMTF; however, the neuron
exhibits weak inhibitory sidebands and, consequently, a best ripple density
that is offset from zero. In the STRF domain, this neurons shows a strong
pattern of excitation and a significant, but subtle, inhibitory subregion.
According to our criterion, we found that 80 of 93 neurons exhibited lowpass
response preferences; 83 neurons (13 bandpass and 70 lowpass) had best ripple
densities offset from zero (as for Fig.
8B) and 69 had best ripple densities <1 cycle/octave.
Thirteen neurons exhibited bandpass selectivity, and no neurons had highpass
response preferences.
Each individual sMTF tells us about the spectral selectivity of individual neurons and tells us little about the overall spectral filtering capabilities of the inferior colliculus. Therefore, we determined the overall spectral selectivity of the inferior colliculus by computing a population sMTF. The population sMTF of the inferior colliculus (Fig. 8D) was obtained by averaging the amplitude-normalized sMTFs of all single neurons. Using the criterion defined for single unit sMTFs, we find that the spectral selectivity of the ICC (in the sampled frequency range) is lowpass with a bandwidth of 0.995 cycles/octave (at upper 8.68 dB cutoff; according to the 1/e bandwidth criterion) or 0.662 cycles/octave (at upper 6 dB cutoff) and centered about a best ripple density of zero cycles/octave. Thus the ICC as a whole has a significant preference for broadband stimuli.
Temporal response preferences
Neurons in the ICC show a diverse range of response preferences to
temporally modulated stimuli (e.g.,
Krishna and Semple 2000;
Langner and Schreiner 1988;
Ramachandran et al. 1999;
Rees and Møller 1983).
While numerous studies have identified the output-response characteristics of
ICC neurons to simple time-varying stimuli, the receptive field structure
leading to these response preferences has previously not been studied.
Temporal response characteristics of ICC neurons can be interpreted by four
parameters of the temporal Gabor model (Eq. 13)—the best
temporal modulation frequency (Fm0),
the peak latency (T0), the response duration (D),
and the temporal phase (Q). Together, the peak latency and response
duration determine the locality and width of the TRF profile, respectively;
the best temporal modulation frequency and temporal phase determine the rate
and alignment of the temporal oscillation of the TRF profile.
Figure 9 illustrates distributions for these parameters for the contralateral receptive field. The absolute value of the best temporal modulation frequency ranged from 0 to 255.5 Hz and the distribution peaks at 30 Hz (Fig. 9A). Thus although numerous neurons can respond selectively to exceedingly fast temporal modulations of the dynamic moving ripple, most neurons preferred low modulation rates.
|
The peak latency is defined as the time of maximal neural response
(excitation or inhibition) following the onset of stimulation, whereas the
response duration determines the time period over which the neurons integrate
acoustic information. From the distributions in
Fig. 9B, the peak
latency was usually <20 ms (range: 3.5–27.4 ms; mean: 10.1 ms;
median: 8.5 ms) and is consistent with previous observations using pure tone
and noise stimuli (Krishna and Semple
2000; Langner and Schreiner
1988). The response durations extended over a broad range
(observed range: 1.8–82.6 ms), although most neurons typically had short
response durations (mean: 12.1 ms, median = 6.2 ms).
Finally, the temporal phase determines the arrangement of excitation and inhibition of the TRF profile, relative to the peak latency or centroid position—which is determined from the TRF envelope. Positive temporal phases shift the TRF profile to the left of the peak latency; negative values shift the TRF profile to longer latencies. The temporal phase distribution (Fig. 9D) shows that 78.5% of temporal phases are positive, thus indicating that the peaks of the TRF profiles are typically shifted to the left of the peak derived from the temporal envelope. Therefore excitation typically precedes inhibition.
The TRF profile allows us to study the timing of the neural response and
the temporal arrangement of excitation and inhibition. The behavior of each
neuron can also be interpreted and studied directly in the frequency domain.
By converting the TRF profile (measured at the center frequency) into the
Fourier domain, we can obtain the temporal modulation transfer function (tMTF)
of each neuron. The tMTF characterizes the time-locked response of the neuron
as a function of the temporal modulation frequency. Using the Gabor function
TRF profile (Eq. 13), the tMTF can be represented by a Gaussian
function of the form
 | (15) |
/D). Figure 10 shows three representative inferior colliculus tMTFs. The examples of Fig. 10, A and B, have a significant DC level response and are therefore classified as having low-pass sensitivity to the temporal modulation frequency. While the first neuron has its strongest response at zero frequency, the latter neuron has a best temporal modulation frequency of 130.3 Hz. Both neurons responded over a large range of modulation frequencies as suggested by their response bandwidths. The bandwidths of the tMTF for Fig. 10, A and B, are 350.0 Hz (at upper 8.68 dB cutoff or 324.7 Hz at upper 6 dB cutoff) and 245.4 Hz (at upper 8.68 dB cutoff or 223.8 Hz at upper 6 dB cutoff), respectively.
|
The timing pattern of the STRF is critical for determining the behavior of the tMTF and its classification as lowpass or bandpass sensitivity—this behavior, in turn, depends strongly on the patterning of temporal excitation and inhibition of the STRF. Typical STRFs that show lowpass tMTFs with zero best temporal modulation frequency contain purely excitatory or inhibitory features in the temporal cross-section of the STRF (e.g., Fig. 10A; same as contra in Fig. 13D); alternately, if the neuron has a lowpass tMTF with non-zero best temporal modulation frequency, its STRF will show an interleaved arrangement of excitation and inhibition—although typically not of the same strength (Fig. 10B). A tMTFs with bandpass sensitivity is depicted in Fig. 10C (same neuron as Fig. 5B). This neuron has a best temporal modulation frequency and bandwidth of 20.0 and 34.0 Hz at upper 8.68 dB cutoff (or bandwidth of 28.5 Hz at upper 6 dB cutoff), respectively. Such STRFs have an alternating arrangement of excitation and inhibition along the temporal axis of the TRF profile. Across the entire population, 51 neurons show lowpass temporal sensitivity— of which n = 4 had best temporal modulation frequency of exactly zero. Forty-two ICC neurons were classified as having bandpass tMTFs—all of which had non-zero best temporal modulation frequencies.
|
The overall temporal selectivity of the ICC was determined by averaging all normalized tMTFs to approximate the composite tMTF for the population. The population tMTF shows lowpass selectivity to the dynamic moving ripple stimulus (Fig. 10D), although the best temporal modulation rate is offset from zero (peak: 30.0 Hz; bandwidth: 117.0 Hz at upper 8.68 dB cutoff or 82.5 Hz at upper 6 dB cutoff).
Time-frequency separability
Central auditory neurons can exhibit time-frequency interactions in
response to sounds with spectral and temporal structure as observed for the
coding of frequency-modulated stimuli
(Kowalski et al. 1996;
Rees and Møller 1983).
Such neural interactions may be used for encoding of time-frequency
conjunctions, although the neural basis for such selectivity is unknown.
Speech and other vocalization signals exhibit directionally oriented
time-frequency sweeps and time-dependent frequency modulations in the signal
spectrum. Neuronal selectivity to oriented stimulus features may arise through
spectro-temporal filters that are selectively oriented to the direction of a
frequency sweep—analogous to the motion selective neurons in the visual
system (DeAngelis et al.
1993b). Alternately, it is also possible that directionally
oriented stimulus features interact with excitatory and inhibitory RF
subregions of unoriented spectro-temporal receptive fields; and the
saliency for oriented stimulus information would instead be explained by the
population response of unoriented spectro-temporal filters. We can address
this issue in the ICC by analyzing the detailed structure of the STRF, TRF,
and SRF. Specifically, we are interested in determining how the TRF profile
changes with frequency or the SRF profile changes with time and how each of
the model parameters contributes to the STRF structure. Are the spectral and
temporal dimensions of the stimulus integrated independently at the colliculus
level? To address these questions, we can initially slice through the STRF at
different latencies (e.g., Fig. 1,
B and C) or at different frequencies (e.g.,
Fig. 2B) to study the
time-frequency interactions of neuronal responses.
Figure 11B shows a
typical time-frequency inseparable STRF. To examine how the structure of the
SRF profile changes with time, we use the spectral Gabor function (Eq.
11) to fit several cross-sections of this STRF at different latencies and
to extract physiologically relevant information of the SRF profiles. The black
lines with open circles in Fig. 11,
C–F, illustrate how four parameters of the Gabor
function vary with latency. The center frequency (x0), the
bandwidth of the SRF (BW), and the best ripple density (0)
do not change substantially with latency (C–E, respectively).
However, the phase (P) gradually changes with latency by roughly
180°, accounting for the obliquely oriented transition from excitation to
inhibition with increasing latency. This example illustrates how the
time-varying spectral phase of the SRF profile accounts for much of the
structure of the inseparable STRF.
|
In contrast to the STRF of Fig.
11B, the STRF of Fig.
11A has a time-frequency separable structure. For this
neuron, the center frequency (x0), the bandwidth (BW), and
the best ripple density (0) are not uniquely specified for
all latencies (dotted red lines in Fig.
11, C–E). The spectral phase (P)
alternates by 180° with latency in a manner that is directly
correlated with the excitatory and inhibitory subregions of the STRF. In the
excitatory subregion, the measured phase of 10° extends over the
entire duration of the excitation (between 8 and 12 ms); but in the inhibitory
regions, the phase increases sharply to 200° (between 5–8 and
12–18 ms). From these examples, it is clear that the spectral phase
determines the sign of the neuron's SRF profile and, therefore, accounts for
the alignment of neural excitation and/or inhibition observed in the STRF.
We can use the same technique as for the SRF profile to investigate how the
TRF profile change as a function of frequency. Temporal cross-sections of the
STRF obtained at different frequencies are individually fitted by Gabor
functions (Eq. 13; Fig.
2D). The changes of four temporal parameters in the Gabor
function are illustrated in the Fig. 11,
G–J, for neurons A and B of
Fig. 11. Neuron B has
a peak latency (T0) and response duration (D)
that vary with frequency (black lines with open circles in
Fig. 11, G and
H, respectively); however, its best temporal modulation
frequency (Fm0) (black line with open circle in
Fig. 11I) is
constant. The temporal phase (Q) of this neuron changes gradually
from 0 to 60° with frequency within the response region (between
4 and 5 octaves) (black line with open circle in
Fig. 11J).
Alternately for neuron A, the peak latency (T0),
response duration (D), and best temporal modulation frequency
(Fm0) do not vary substantially over frequency
(red lines with solid circle in G–I, respectively). Because the
temporal pattern of the excitation and inhibition is similar at all
frequencies, the temporal phase is roughly constant throughout the extent of
the STRF (red line with solid circle in J).
The preceding analysis demonstrates that inseparable STRFs do not have unique spectral phase over latency. Furthermore it shows that the peak latency, duration, and temporal phase are not necessarily constant with changing frequency. Separable STRFs, alternately, have unique spectral phase (±180° increment), peak latency, response duration, and temporal phase over frequency within the specified response region.
The Gabor STRF model is built up as sum of STRF components, each of which
is a time-frequency separable STRF. Therefore a measure of separability can be
obtained by considering the energy of the first-singular value in relationship
to the total energy of the higher-order singular values of the fitted Gabor
model. The separability index (d; see METHODS)
assumes values between 0 and 1. If the measured STRF is perfectly separable,
d assumes a values of 1; alternately, an STRF with highly
inseparable time-frequency features has a separability index near zero. As an
example, the STRF of Fig.
11A is approximately time-frequency separable and,
consequently, its separability index is high (0.934). Neurons with
non-separable oblique features typically have lower separability indices
(e.g., Fig. 11B,
0.692).
Most neurons in the inferior colliculus have time-frequency separable
structure and, therefore, independently integrate spectral and temporal
stimulus attributes. The separability index distribution of all neurons
(Fig. 12) contains a sharp
peak near d = 1 (observed range: 0.292–1). Measured
separability index values are skewed toward one as suggested by the mean and
median values (mean = 0.919, median = 1). Of those neurons (40%) that exhibit
time-frequency inseparable structure (d < 1), only a few
neurons exhibited highly inseparable receptive field arrangements (as in Figs.
5, A and B,
and 13C) and many
more had separability indices near one. Thus in contrast to motion selectivity
in the visual system—where a large proportion of visual cortex neurons
exhibit highly inseparable receptive fields (DeAngelis et al.
1993a,b,
1995)—most ICC STRFs are
either purely separable or only weakly inseparable. This finding supports the
hypothesis that the majority of selectivity to FM stimuli in the auditory
system arises through stimulus interactions with excitatory and inhibitory RF
subregions and not through strongly oriented neural receptive fields.
Furthermore, the high proportion of separable STRFs may be important for
encoding comodulated components in natural signals that are time-frequency
separable (Nelken et al.
1999), whereas the small proportion of highly inseparable
receptive fields may play a specific role in the coding of strongly oriented
frequency sweeps, which appear to be less prevalent in natural signals.
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Binaurality
Binaural interactions are well described in the central auditory system
(Goldberg and Brown 1969;
Irvine and Gago 1990;
Kuwada et al. 1997;
Schnupp et al. 2001). Most
binaural studies use structurally simple stimuli that are simultaneously
presented to each ear to identify neural mechanisms of sound localization.
Although a great deal is known about the response characteristics to such
stimulus combinations, little is known about the general receptive field
arrangements underlying binaural interactions. For this reason, we apply our
Gabor model to compare the arrangements of neural receptive fields for
contralateral and ipsilateral inputs to the ICC.
Hypothetically, binaural interactions to simple stimuli should be reflected
in the structure and/or energy of the contra- and ipsi-STRFs. One possibility
is that binaural receptive fields have identical spectro-temporal structure.
Under such a model, differences in average input drive (e.g., STRF energy)
from each ear could potentially account for binaural sensitivities, although
each neuron would encode for identical spectro-temporal stimulus features in
both ears. Alternately, it is also possible that the contra- and ipsi-STRFs
are distinctly different and systematic differences in the converging
receptive field structures account for binaural sensitivities.
Figure 13 illustrates typical
receptive fields obtained with simultaneous binaural stimulation with
statistically independent contra and ipsi dynamic moving ripple stimuli
(Escabí and Schreiner
2002). In the previous sections, we examined only the structure of
the dominant contralateral STRFs. We find that 36/99 ICC neurons also exhibit
significant ipsilateral STRFs. In terms of the dominant excitatory or dominant
inhibitory interactions (Goldberg and
Brown 1969), neurons with binaural sensitivity can be classified
as principally excitatory-excitatory (EE), excitatory-inhibitory (EI),
excitatory-unresponsive (EO), etc. Although most neurons exhibit no
discernable STRF structure for the ipsilateral ear (P < 0.002; EO;
62/99; Fig. 13, E and
C), 23 neurons exhibited dominant excitatory binaural
interactions (EE; Fig.
13A); six neurons responded exclusively to the
ipsilateral ear (OE; Fig.
13F); 4 had a dominant ipsilateral inhibitory subregion
(EI; Fig. 13B); 3
exhibited dominant contralateral inhibition (IE;
Fig. 13D); and one
neuron had a dominant inhibitory contralateral subregion (IO;
Fig. 13E).
The preceding examples illustrate the diversity of binaural STRF composition observed in the ICC. Differences between the contra- and ipsi-STRFs can, in theory, manifest solely along the temporal dimension of the TRF profile, the spectral dimension of the SRF profile, or along both—the spectral and temporal dimension of the STRF. Therefore we compared the spectral and temporal composition of the contra- and ipsi-STRFs to determine which dimensions and parameters contribute to binaural sensitivities.
The spectral, temporal, and spectro-temporal arrangement of binaural receptive fields was first analyzed by considering the structural similarity between the contra- and ipsi-STRF. Three metrics were devised to quantify the relative degree of structural aural similarity for TRF profiles, SRF profiles, and the entire STRF (see METHODS; Eqs. 4–6). The binaural similarity index (BSI) is analogous to the correlation coefficient between the contralateral and ipsilateral STRF. The spectral BSI (BSIs) and the temporal BSI (BSIt) are analogous to a correlation coefficient between the contra- and ipsi-SRF profiles and the TRF profiles, respectively.
Example binaural response profiles along with the respective TRF and SRF profiles are shown in Fig. 14B. Some neurons exhibited temporally orthogonal receptive field arrangements (Fig. 14B; neuron 2; BSIt = –0.177) whereas others had anticorrelated TRF profiles (Fig. 14B; neuron 1, BSIt = –0.928; neuron 3, BSIt = –0.888). Spectral profiles could also exhibit correlated (Fig. 14B; neuron 2, BSIs = 0.728; neuron 4, BSIs = 0.909), anticorrelated (Fig. 14B; neuron 3; BSIs = –0.437), or uncorrelated (Fig. 14B; neuron 1; BSIs = –0.110) arrangements between the contra- and ipsi-STRFs. Such differences either occurred simultaneously in time and frequency (Fig. 14B; neuron 3) or independently for each dimension (Fig. 14B; neuron 2). For instance, neuron 2 of Fig. 14B has correlated SRF profiles and a temporally misaligned (uncorrelated) TRF profiles, whereas neuron 3 has misaligned (anticorrelated) SRF and TRF profiles. Other neurons had perfectly aligned receptive field structure with similar SRF and TRF profiles (Fig. 14B; neuron 4).
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Population data for the spectral, temporal, and spectro-temporal BSI are shown in Fig. 14A. For the vast majority of binaural neurons, the spectral and temporal BSIs are clustered near high negative and positive values (Fig. 14A), thus indicating that the contra- and ipsi-SRF and TRF profiles can assume a correlated or anticorrelated structure. The absolute magnitude of the spectral and temporal BSIs (spectral, 0.723 ± 0.199; temporal, 0.760 ± 0.244; mean ± SD) are reasonably high, whereas the absolute magnitude of the joint spectro-temporal BSI is significantly lower (0.513 ± 0.2352; mean ± SD; paired t-test, P < 0.001). This finding suggests that, individually, the temporal and spectral dimensions of the contra- and ipsi-STRF share some common features in the TRF and SRF profiles; however, the spectro-temporal arrangements of the contra- and ipsi-STRFs appear to be less matched.
Systematic differences in contra- and ipsilateral STRF structure can
potentially account for some aspects of binaural sensitivities in the ICC.
Which receptive field dimensions (temporal or spectral) and neural parameters
contribute to the observed binaural receptive field mismatch? To identify the
source of this mismatch, we first fitted the contra- and ipsi-STRFs to the
Gabor STRF model. Contralateral and ipsilateral parameters for each receptive
field were then individually compared.
Figure 15 illustrates scatter
plots for the spectral and temporal parameters derived from the contra- and
ipsi-STRFs. Some spectral and temporal parameters, including the peak latency
(T0, Fig.
15D; r = 0.912 ± 0.078, t-test,
P < 0.001) and center frequency (x0,
Fig. 15C; r
= 0.946 ± 0.061, t-test, P < 0.001), were highly
conserved; other parameters showed lower correlation values although
statistically significant. Comparing temporal
(Fm0, D) and spectral parameters
(0, BW), we find that the temporal receptive field
dimensions are more highly matched for the two inputs
(Fm0: r = 0.810 ± 0.111,
t-test, P < 0.001; D: r = 0.542
± 0.158, t-test, P < 0.001; 0:
r = 0.561 ± 0.156, t-test, P < 0.001; BW:
r = 0.356 ± 0.177, t-test, P < 0.03). All
spectral and temporal parameters were statistically correlated, with the
exception of the spectral and temporal phases (circular correlation analysis;
P: r = 0.01 ± 0.07, bootstrap, P > 0.92;
Q: r = –0.10 ± 0.10, bootstrap, P >
0.26). Thus although numerous STRF parameters collectively contributed to the
mismatch of ipsi- and contra-receptive fields, the spectral and temporal
phases contributed the most to the binaural receptive field misalignments.
Together, this suggests that the overall extent and centers of the spectral
and temporal receptive field integration area are typically closely matched
binaurally. However, the degree of binaural alignment of excitation and
inhibition can vary widely among neurons, thus providing a currently little
appreciated binaural integration condition beyond intra-aural time and level
differences.
|
As proposed in the visual system, systematic differences in the binocular
receptive field properties may be used to detect the depth of a visual object.
In the studies by Anzai et al.
(1999), visual cortex neurons
show systematic differences retinotopic position and spatial phase between the
left and right inputs that are consistent with models of binocular depth
perception. Similarly, our analysis of the binaural composition of the
auditory STRF suggests that differences in the binaural alignment of
excitatory and inhibitory RF features may provide a mechanism for encoding
differences in the converging binaural spectrum; which, in turn, can be used
to determine the position of a sound source in space. Unlike visual RFs, we
find that the central position of colliculus STRFs is conserved binaurally,
and therefore positional cues do not appear to contribute to binaural
detection as for the visual system. Significant disparities in the
spectro-temporal phase, however, lead to interleaved patterns of excitation
and inhibition binaurally. Such aural differences may be important for
analyzing spectral notches in the spectrum of a sound source, which vary
significantly as a function of spatial position (Hartmann and Witternberg
1996; Kulkarini and Colburn 1998).
|
|
DISCUSSION |
|---|
|
). A time-frequency Gabor STRF model is presented that allows
us to quantify the receptive field structure of auditory STRFs. This model can
be used to remove measurement noise in the STRF and to extract physiologically
meaningful information of the receptive field structure. Our results provide
the following new insights: 1 the Gabor function is an adequate
descriptor of the SRF and TRF profile (Figs.
1 and
2). Using the described
singular value decomposition method, we can extend the fitting procedure to
the entire STRF. The STRF can be described by the weighted sum of independent
separable STRF components, which are the product of a spectral waveform and a
temporal waveform (Figs. 3 and
5). These can in turn be fitted
with the time-frequency Gabor STRF model. 2 From the analysis of the
contralateral sMTF and tMTF, ICC neurons exhibited lowpass and/or bandpass
spectral and temporal selectivity. 3 The separability index
(d) measures the degree of time-frequency separability of
the STRF. Most neurons (60.2%) exhibited time-frequency separable receptive
field structure and, therefore, independently process spectral and temporal
stimulus attributes. 4 Finally, we used the model to study
differences in the converging ipsi- and contralateral receptive field
structure. Our results indicate that for neurons exhibiting binaural
convergence most STRF properties for the two inputs are highly correlated.
However, subtle spectro-temporal differences in the alignment of excitation
and inhibition contribute significantly to binaural processing in the ICC.
Together, the model provides a uniform description of the receptive field
structure that allows us to jointly evaluate spectral, temporal,
spectro-temporal, and binaural aspects of the stimulus-response
relationship. Gabor STRF model
The STRF is an approximation of the neural receptive field obtained by the
spike-triggered average method using finite experimental data
(Miller et al. 2002;
Escabí and Schreiner
2002). A time-frequency Gabor model was used to remove measurement
noise and to quantitatively evaluate the receptive field structure of ICC
neurons. Both the spectral RF and temporal RF profiles are equally well
described by a unidimensional Gabor function, as indicated by the high
temporal (mean = 0.933) and spectral (mean = 0.938) similarity indices of the
fits to the raw data. The structure of the entire STRF showed a subtle
reduction in the spectro-temporal SI (mean = 0.846) that can be accounted for
by multiplicative errors that are propagated independently when the STRF is
built up as a product of SRF and TRF profiles. Differences in the entire STRF
structure were evaluated by measuring the normalized MSE between the model and
measured STRF. Most neurons had low MSE values (mean ± SD = 0.185
± 0.126; Fig.
6D), indicating that the receptive field structures were
well accounted for both in shape and energy.
By analyzing the statistical structure of the receptive field measurement noise (Fig. 4), we were able to determine the number of independent receptive field dimensions required to properly fit collicular STRFs. Typically, we find that one or two STRF components are sufficient to capture the structure of inferior colliculus receptive fields. Only 39.7 and 7.5% of the neurons had significant second and third components each accounting, respectively, for only 6.2 ± 5.0 and 2.3 ± 1.8% of the total receptive field energy. Because each Gabor function requires 9 independent parameters, ICC STRFs therefore typically require 9 or 18 independent parameters to fully account for the entire receptive field structure.
Spectro-temporal receptive field structure
The spectral modulation transfer function (sMTF) was used to quantify the
spectral selectivity of the SRF profile. Most ICC neurons exhibited lowpass
sMTF (86%, n = 80; 14% bandpass, n = 13) although in most of
those cases (70 of 83 lowpass neurons), a non-zero best ripple density (a peak
in the filter function) could be identified (ranging from 0.022 to 2.113
cycles/octave). By comparing the distribution of best ripple density in the
ICC to those in the thalamus and the cortex, we find that spectral preferences
are highly conserved between the inferior colliculus and auditory thalamus
(Miller et al. 2001,
2002) (Wilcoxon rank test,
P > 0.33). Compared to the primary auditory cortex, the
distribution of ripple densities was significantly different for the ICC
(Wilcoxon rank test, P < 0.001) although both were grossly
overlapped. When we recomputed the population sMTF according to the energy
normalization procedure of Miller et al.
(2002), we found that the
collicular, thalamic, and cortical population sMTFs were closely matched, with
similar upper 6-dB cutoff (upper 6-dB cutoff: ICC, 1.46 cycles/octave;
thalamus, 1.30 cycles/octave; cortex, 1.37 cycles/octave; sMTF correlation
coefficient: thalamus vs. ICC, r = 0.99 ± 0.01; cortex vs.
ICC, r = 0.99 ± 0.01, mean ± SD). Furthermore, the
observed range of sMTF bandwidths was comparable to those found in cortex with
static ripple stimuli (Calhoun and
Schreiner 1998; Schreiner and
Calhoun 1994) and in the thalamocortical system with dynamic
moving ripple (Miller et al.
2002). Together, the data indicate that the range of spectral
selectivity, as determined with ripple spectra, is highly conserved in the
colliculus and throughout the thalamocortical network
(Miller et al. 2001).
The best ripple density reflects the periodicity pattern of spectral excitation and inhibition of the SRF profile while the spectral phase contributes to their spectral alignment (i.e., the dominant SRF profile peak position relative to the peak of the SRF envelope). Most STRFs have positive spectral phases distributed between 0 and 90°. Therefore, the frequency of the dominant excitatory SRF peak is typically below the neuron's center frequency (i.e., the peak of the SRF envelope), while the dominant inhibitory mode is typically above the center frequency.
In contrast to the spectral response, the temporal response pattern is more
intricate. First, the structure of the temporal receptive profile is not
symmetric about its peak point, and, therefore, it is necessary to skew the
time axis to account for the sharp onsets response observed for the temporal
envelopes of nearly all neurons (as determined from the positive asymmetry
index). This property of the temporal receptive field likely accounts for the
phasic nature of onset responses observed at the colliculus level for pure
tones and throughout the auditory pathway
(Heil and Irvine 1997).
Furthermore, the temporal receptive field asymmetry may explain the perceptual
saliency for asymmetrically ramped auditory stimuli (Neuhoff 2000; Patterson
1994).
Temporal response parameters that quantify the timing of ICC response were
derived from the Gabor STRF model and the population tMTFs. The relative
alignment of excitation and inhibition was determined from the temporal phase
of the TRF profile. As for the SRF profile, we find that most STRFs have
positive temporal phases between 0 and 90°, and therefore, the TRF profile
of most neurons show an initial excitatory receptive field domain that is
followed by an inhibitory/suppressive period. Latency values measured directly
from the peak of the TRF profile are consistent with those reported previously
for simpler stimuli (Krishna and Semple
2000; Langner and Schreiner
1988). The median value of peak latency (8.5 ms) is shorter than
those in the thalamus and cortex (10.5 and 13.0 ms);
(Miller et al. 2002). However,
the distributions of the peak latencies for these three stations grossly
overlap, and, therefore, all three stations are substantially coactivated.
The main temporal modulation preferences observed in this study largely
match the ranges observed in previous studies with amplitude modulated tones
or noise (e.g., Krishna and Semple
2000; Langner and Schreiner
1988; Rees and Møller,
1983). By comparing the tMTF of ICC, thalamus, and cortex
(Miller et al. 2002) we
confirm that temporal modulation preferences systematically deteriorate from
the ICC to the primary auditory cortex
(Schreiner and Langner,
1988a). The range of the best temporal modulation preferences in
the ICC is broader than those in the thalamus and cortex
(Miller et al. 2002), but
narrower than for auditory nerve (AN) fibers
(Joris and Yin 1992). There is
a significant reduction in the population tMTF upper 6-dB cutoff (ICC, 82.5
Hz; thalamus, 62.9 Hz; cortex, 37.4 Hz) as well as the peak modulation
following rate (ICC, 30 Hz; thalamus, 21.9 Hz; cortex, 12.8 Hz). Thus in
contrast to the spectral selectivity, which is highly preserved, temporal
response preferences degrade dramatically across these three stations. More
than 50% of ICC neurons prefer best temporal modulation frequencies below the
measured population mean (73.6 Hz); therefore suggesting that the population
tMTF selectivity is biased toward low-modulation frequencies in the ICC.
According to our bandwidth criterion, we find that 55% of ICC neurons
exhibited lowpass sensitivity although the majority of lowpass neurons have
tMTF peaks away from 0 Hz despite a significant DC level response; bandpass
neurons, by comparison, had no evident DC component. The dramatic increase of
bandpass behavior and response selectivity in the ICC compared to the auditory
nerve (Joris and Yin 1992) is
likely due to the interleaved patterns of temporal excitation and inhibition
that is evident in nearly all ICC STRFs.
Analysis of the combined spectro-temporal receptive field structure reveals that the vast majority of ICC neurons are time-frequency separable (separability index: range, 0.292–1; mean, 0.919; median, 1) although some neurons exhibit obliquely oriented excitatory and inhibitory STRF subregions, or spectro-temporally misaligned excitatory/inhibitory components. This finding suggests that the majority of ICC neurons independently process temporal and spectral stimulus information. This is consistent with the fact that the first STRF component obtained from the SVD accounts for most of the STRF energy.
Spectro-temporal selectivity can also be evaluated by comparing the
spectral and temporal parameters of the Gabor STRF model. Although the
separability index indicates that the structure of the STRF can be built up
from the TRF and SRF profiles, it is nonetheless possible that the parameters
of the SRF and TRF profiles covary. By comparing the spectral bandwidth and
temporal duration of the Gabor STRF model, we find that there is an evident
time-frequency resolution tradeoff in the receptive field size
(Fig. 16C).
Furthermore, the best ripple density and best temporal modulation rate also
showed a significant negative correlation (r = –0.452 ±
0.094; P < 0.001; Fig.
16D)—indicative of a time-frequency tradeoff in the
modulation filtering resolution
(Escabí and Schreiner
2002).
|
Larger receptive fields can potentially accommodate a larger number of
inhibitory/excitatory receptive field components as observed for feature
selectivity in the songbird system (Sen et
al. 2001). By analyzing the structure of the SRF and TRF profiles,
we find a distinct trend between the receptive field size and the observed
modulation preference (Fig.
16A). Neurons with broad spectral bandwidths (>1.5
octaves) responded only to low ripple densities (<0.5 cycles/octave),
whereas neurons that responded to a limited range of frequencies (<1.5
octaves) responded over the entire range of measured best ripple densities
(0–2.1 cycles/octave). Likewise, the response duration also
determined the number of temporal oscillations of the temporal receptive field
profile (Fig. 16B).
STRFs with short durations responded over the entire range of measured
temporal modulation rates (0–255 Hz) whereas neurons that had
long-lasting temporal response profiles only exhibited slow temporal
modulation rates (<50 Hz). This trend suggests that the number of
excitatory and inhibitory subregions of the STRF is constrained by the
receptive field bandwidth and duration, respectively. Such spectro-temporal
tradeoffs in receptive field resolution and modulation filtering are
consistent with a topographically distributed spectro-temporal tradeoff
observed across the extent of the ICC isofrequency band lamina
(Schreiner and Langner 1988b).
Furthermore, such a tradeoffs may be important for the coding of natural
sounds, which show a similar time-frequency tradeoff
(Lewicki 2002;
Theunissen et al. 2000).
Structure of visual versus auditory STRFs
Recent studies in the auditory system indicate that the structure of the
auditory and visual STRFs exhibit similar time-varying structure
(de Charms et al. 1998;
Shamma 2001). These inferences
are largely drawn from qualitative features of the auditory STRF, although the
fine structure of auditory and visual STRFs has not been quantitatively
compared. The Gabor STRF model provides a basis for comparing the structure of
auditory STRFs directly with those obtained in the visual system using a set
of nearly identical analytic equations
(Adelson and Bergen 1985;
Cai et al. 1997;
DeAngelis et al. 1999; Jones
and Palmer 1987; Watson and Ahumada
1985).
Comparing our results with those in the visual system reveals that auditory
and visual STRFs are reasonably well described by a sum of time-frequency or
time-space separable Gabor functions. As observed in the visual system
(DeAngelis et al. 1999), error
estimates (Fig. 6D)
and similarity index (Fig.
6C) measurements confirm that most of the structure of
auditory STRF is captured with as little as two independent time-frequency
Gabor components. Furthermore, comparable percent errors observed for both
visual (DeAngelis et al. 1999)
and auditory STRFs indicate that the Gabor STRF model is equally well suited
for describing auditory and visual receptive fields.
Aside from the faster temporal modulation preferences in the ICC, both
visual and auditory temporal receptive field share several structural
properties. Similar to visual receptive fields
(Cai et al. 1997; DeAngelis et
al.
1993a,b,
1999), the timing profile of
auditory midbrain STRFs exhibit a distinct temporal asymmetry that is typified
by a short rise time and long-lasting decay and requires time-warping function
to achieve symmetry.
The spectral dimension of the auditory STRF is analogous to the spatial
dimension of the visual STRF; however, the retinal sensory epithelium is a
two-dimensional surface, whereas the primary sensory epithelium in the cochlea
is unidimensional. When the spatial dimension of visual STRFs is collapsed
along the direction of preferred orientation, visual and auditory STRF can be
described by a nearly identical two-dimensional Gabor function
(DeAngelis et al. 1999). Using
this convention, the structure of auditory and visual STRFs is remarkably
similar although the extents of their spectral and spatial structure are
substantially different. In the visual system, the width of the Gabor-function
defines the spatial extent over which the visual neurons integrate visual
information, whereas the SRF bandwidth describes the extent of frequencies
over which auditory neurons integrate sound information. In the auditory
system, 1 octave corresponds to 0.279 mm of receptor surface in the
cochlea (Greenwood 1990).
Therefore the observed range of bandwidths (0.14–4.8 octaves; mean
± SD = 0.987 ± 0.915 octaves) extended over 0.04–1.34 mm
(mean ± SD = 0.275 ± 0.255 mm) of cochlear epithelium, which is
broader than the range of spatial extents in VI receptive fields in the cat
(0.035–0.4 mm of retinal receptor surface);
(Bishop et al. 1962;
Tusa et al. 1978).
Interestingly, the minimum sensory epithelium distance covered by both
auditory and visual RFs is comparable in its extent (0.04 vs. 0.035
mm).
Finally, the spectral phase of collicular neurons is largely limited to the
range from 0 to 90°. Therefore the arrangement of excitation and
inhibition appears to show similar relationships for the visual and auditory
STRFs, in which excitation and inhibition can exhibit a variety of spectral
alignments with respect to the center of the receptive field
(Anzai et al. 1999). This
structural property may enable ICC neurons to decipher spectral information
about sounds with uniquely aligned spectral notches or resonances.
Binaural response preferences
Most binaural studies in the inferior colliculus focus on the analysis of
interaural timing (ITD) and level (ILD) differences cues (e.g.,
Goldberg and Brown 1969;
Irvine and Gago 1990;
Kuwada et al. 1997). While
such cues clearly contribute to binaural phenomena, little is known about the
converging spectro-temporal receptive field arrangements that contribute to
binaural response integration and sound localization in the ICC.
By comparing the ipsilateral and contralateral receptive fields derived
from simultaneously presented but statistically independent DMR stimuli to the
two ears, we were able to characterize the structural properties of the
converging spectro-temporal information. In 
of the recorded
neurons, STRFs for both ears could be obtained. Individually, the magnitude of
the spectral and temporal similarity indices can be quite high (mean, 0.738
and 0.816, respectively), whereas the magnitude of the combined
spectro-temporal binaural similarity index is typically much lower (mean =
0.513; paired t-test, P < 0.001). This disparity is
partly accounted for by subtle spectral and temporal phase differences between
the SRF or TRF profiles, thus resulting in STRF structures where the contra
and ipsi excitatory and inhibitory subfields are spectro-temporally
mismatched. Although, some of the reduction in the BSI is also caused by other
STRF parameters that only showed a weak correlation (e.g., spectral bandwidth
and response duration), the spectral and temporal phases likely provide the
greatest contribution to this reduction (statistically uncorrelated aurally,
P > 0.92 and P > 0.26, respectively). Other receptive
field parameters, including the center frequency, peak latency, best ripple
density, and the temporal modulation rate are significantly correlated. Thus
although excitatory and inhibitory inputs to the ICC are aurally mismatched,
their receptive fields are centrally overlapped with similar modulation
preferences.
Although the magnitude of the spectral and temporal BSI determine the correspondence in shape of the contra- and ipsi-TRF and -SRF profiles, the sign of the BSI determines the relative alignment of excitation and inhibition. BSI values are clustered for negative and positive values, indicating that SRF and TRF profiles either exhibited a partly correlated or anti-correlated arrangement. The sign of the spectral, temporal, and spectro-temporal BSIs was conserved across all three metrics (Fig. 14A), and therefore, the specific relationship observed for the STRF (correlated/anticorrelated) was mutually preserved for the SRF and TRF profiles (spectral vs. spectro-temporal: r = 0.915 ± 0.076, P < 0.001; temporal vs. spectro-temporal: r = 0.853 ± 0.099, P < 0.001). In contrast, the magnitude of the spectral and temporal BSIs show no specific correlation (spectral vs. temporal: r = –0.089 ± 0.188; P > 0.5), although the magnitude of the spectral and temporal BSIs individually contributed to the spectro-temporal BSI (spectral vs. spectro-temporal: r = 0.670 ± 0.140, P < 0.001; temporal vs. spectro-temporal: r = 0.531 ± 0.160, P < 0.003).
The binaural receptive field structure should, in theory, account for
binaural response preferences of auditory neurons; however, the exact role of
the binaural STRF needs to be more fully investigated. Specifically, how does
the binaural receptive field structure contribute to sound localization and
binaural phenomena? Because of the slow time course of the TRF profile
(Fig. 9C), it is
unlikely that STRF arrangements contribute to ITD sensitivities in the ICC
(usually in the hundredths of microseconds range). Instead, the described
receptive field arrangements likely contribute to ILD sensitivities and
location-specific spectral filtering of broadband sound. The diversity and
complexity of observed binaural STRF arrangements (e.g.,
Fig. 13) indicate that simple
classification schemes based on the dominant excitatory or inhibitory
receptive field contribution (Goldberg and
Brown 1969) are too simplistic to fully account for the binaural
preferences to dynamic broadband stimuli. Differences in the phase, bandwidth,
and ripple density of the SRF structure could potentially be used to localize
broadband sound sources that are highly susceptible to differentially filtered
spectrum (Hartmann and Witternberg 1996; Kulkarini and Colburn 1998). Thus it
is possible that interaural receptive field disparities are integrated at the
colliculus and beyond to compute the spatial position of a sound source,
analogous to the integration of binocular disparities in the primary visual
cortex (Anzai et al. 1999).
As observed for visual cortex neurons we find that ICC STRFs share similar
structural parameters binaurally although their spectral and temporal phases
appear to be misaligned (Anzai et al.
1999); however, unlike visual receptive fields, we find no
disparities in the central position of the STRF. The relevance of this finding
for sound localization can be understood by noting that the binaural detection
problem is fundamentally different from binocular fusion. In the visual
system, external visual stimuli can project onto different spatial positions
of the retinal epithelium. Deciphering the distance to a visual object
requires that visual neurons analyze positional shifts in the contra and ipsi
projecting images and subtle phase disparities in the local image structure.
Sound localization, however, arises via differential filtering of the incoming
signal spectrum by the listener's head and pinnae (Hartmann and Witternberg
1996; Kulkarini and Colburn 1998). This differential filtering modifies the
frequency content of the incoming sound by superimposing binaurally misaligned
spectral notches; yet, unlike the visual system, the sound's spectral content
is never displaced along the cochlear epithelium. Binaural cues are, in this
manner, interwoven with the frequency spectrum of the sound, which is relevant
for determining the sound source content. Thus the observed similarities in
the contra and ipsi STRFs (e.g., center frequency, ripple density, duration
etc.) may be important for extracting information about the sound source
content, whereas the misaligned receptive field phases may be necessary to
decipher interaural disparities arising from the sound source position.
Recent studies have demonstrated that binaural STRFs account for much of
the structure in spatial selectivity profiles of cortical neurons
(Schnupp et al. 2001), and it
is likely that the proposed interaural filtering mechanisms account for the
observed spatial preferences. The wide assortments of binaural receptive field
arrangements in the colliculus, thalamus, and primary auditory cortex
(Miller et al. 2002) may
therefore be necessary for the brain to efficiently compute and decipher
differences in the incident spectrum, which arise through head shadowing and
pinnae filtering and which depend on the sound source position. Furthermore,
temporal differences in the contra- and ipsi-STRF structure may be necessary
to dynamically track changes in the spectrum of a moving sound source. Such
interaural filtering, along with the observed receptive field arrangements,
may provide a basis for encoding binaural disparities in the source spectrum
independently of contextual information in complex environmental stimuli.
|
|
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
|---|
|
This work was supported by National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders Grant DC-002260 to C. E. Schreiner and a grant from the University of Connecticut Research Foundation to M. A. Escabí.
|
|
FOOTNOTES |
|---|
*Address for reprint requests: M. A. Escabí, University of Connecticut, Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept., 317 Fairfield Rd, Unit 1157, Storrs, CT 06269-2157 (E-mail: escabi{at}engr.uconn.edu).
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