Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: In vitro and in silico studies have suggested that octopus cells in the mammalian posterior ventral cochlear nucleus (PVCN) are monaural coincidence detectors that encode the temporal structure of complex sounds. In vivo studies on these neurons, however, are rare due to several technical difficulties. We used sharp high-impedance electrodes in anesthetized gerbils to study the responses of octopus cells to click trains. We find that, even though octopus cells only fire an onset spike to pure tones, they fire in sustained fashion to trains of transients. They entrain to click trains up to 400 Hz with vector strength almost equal to one and spike jitter at ∼100 microseconds. This temporal precision is unmatched by any other cell type in the auditory system.
DOI: 10.3813/aaa.919238
Authors: Hsin-Wei Lu, Philip H. Smith, Philip X. Joris
Institutions: KU Leuven, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Language: English
Subfield: Sensory Systems
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2896464322