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Maxwell BN, Farhadi A, Brennan MA, Svec A, Carney LH. A Subcortical Model for Auditory Forward Masking with Efferent Control of Cochlear Gain. eNeuro 2024; 11:ENEURO.0365-24.2024. [PMID: 39231633 PMCID: PMC11419694 DOI: 10.1523/eneuro.0365-24.2024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/23/2024] [Accepted: 08/26/2024] [Indexed: 09/06/2024] Open
Abstract
Previous physiological and psychophysical studies have explored whether feedback to the cochlea from the efferent system influences forward masking. The present work proposes that the limited growth-of-masking (GOM) observed in auditory nerve (AN) fibers may have been misunderstood; namely, that this limitation may be due to the influence of anesthesia on the efferent system. Building on the premise that the unanesthetized AN may exhibit GOM similar to more central nuclei, the present computational modeling study demonstrates that feedback from the medial olivocochlear (MOC) efferents may contribute to GOM observed physiologically in onset-type neurons in both the cochlear nucleus and inferior colliculus (IC). Additionally, the computational model of MOC efferents used here generates a decrease in masking with longer masker-signal delays similar to that observed in IC physiology and in psychophysical studies. An advantage of this explanation over alternative physiological explanations (e.g., that forward masking requires inhibition from the superior paraolivary nucleus) is that this theory can explain forward masking observed in the brainstem, early in the ascending pathway. For explaining psychoacoustic results, one strength of this model is that it can account for the lack of elevation in thresholds observed when masker level is randomly varied from interval-to-interval, a result that is difficult to explain using the conventional temporal window model of psychophysical forward masking. Future directions for evaluating the efferent mechanism as a contributing mechanism for psychoacoustic results are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Braden N Maxwell
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14642
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14642
| | - Afagh Farhadi
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627
| | - Marc A Brennan
- Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68583
| | - Adam Svec
- Department of Audiology, San José State University, San José, California 95192
| | - Laurel H Carney
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14642
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14642
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Sensitivity of Vowel-Evoked Envelope Following Responses to Spectra and Level of Preceding Phoneme Context. Ear Hear 2022; 43:1327-1335. [DOI: 10.1097/aud.0000000000001190] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
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Wang N, Lin M, Qiao A, Xiao Z. Processing of Paired Click-Tone Stimulation in the Mice Inferior Colliculus. Front Physiol 2019; 10:195. [PMID: 30886587 PMCID: PMC6409337 DOI: 10.3389/fphys.2019.00195] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/05/2018] [Accepted: 02/15/2019] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
The inferior colliculus (IC) is known as a neuronal structure involved in the integration of acoustic information in the ascending auditory pathway. However, the processing of paired acoustic stimuli containing different sound types, especially when they are applied closely, in the IC remains poorly studied. We here firstly investigated the IC neuronal response to the paired stimuli comprising click and pure tone with different inter-stimulus (click-tone) intervals using in vivo loose-patch recordings in anesthetized BALB/c mice. It was found that the total acoustic evoked spike counts decreased under certain click-tone interval conditions on some neurons with or without click-induced supra-threshold responses. Application of click could enhance the minimum threshold of the neurons responding to the tone in a pair without changing other characteristics of the neuronal tone receptive fields. We further studied the paired acoustic stimuli evoked excitatory/inhibitory inputs, IC neurons received, by holding the membrane potential at -70/0 mV using in vivo whole-cell voltage-clamp techniques. The curvature and peak amplitude of the excitatory/inhibitory post-synaptic current (EPSC/IPSC) could be almost unchanged under different inter-stimulus interval conditions. Instead of showing the summation of synaptic inputs, most recorded neurons only had the EPSC/IPSC with the amplitude similar as the bigger one evoked by click or tone in a pair when the inter-stimulus interval was small. We speculated that the IC could inherit the paired click-tone information which had been integrated before reaching it.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ningqian Wang
- Key Laboratory of Mental Health of the Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of Psychiatric Disorders of Guangdong Province, Department of Physiology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Minlin Lin
- Key Laboratory of Mental Health of the Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of Psychiatric Disorders of Guangdong Province, Department of Physiology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China
| | - An Qiao
- Key Laboratory of Mental Health of the Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of Psychiatric Disorders of Guangdong Province, Department of Physiology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Zhongju Xiao
- Key Laboratory of Mental Health of the Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of Psychiatric Disorders of Guangdong Province, Department of Physiology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China
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Parthasarathy A, Herrmann B, Bartlett EL. Aging alters envelope representations of speech-like sounds in the inferior colliculus. Neurobiol Aging 2018; 73:30-40. [PMID: 30316050 DOI: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2018.08.023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/28/2018] [Revised: 08/13/2018] [Accepted: 08/27/2018] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Hearing impairment in older people is thought to arise from impaired temporal processing in auditory circuits. We used a systems-level (scalp recordings) and a microcircuit-level (extracellular recordings) approach to investigate how aging affects the sensitivity to temporal envelopes of speech-like sounds in rats. Scalp-recorded potentials suggest an age-related increase in sensitivity to temporal regularity along the ascending auditory pathway. The underlying cellular changes in the midbrain were examined using extracellular recordings from inferior colliculus neurons. We observed an age-related increase in sensitivity to the sound's onset and temporal regularity (i.e., periodicity envelope) in the spiking output of inferior colliculus neurons, relative to their synaptic inputs (local field potentials). This relative enhancement for aged animals was most prominent for multi-unit (relative to single-unit) spiking activity. Spontaneous multi-unit, but not single-unit, activity was also enhanced in aged compared with young animals. Our results suggest that aging is associated with altered sensitivity to a sound's temporal regularities, and that these effects may be due to increased gain of neural network activity in the midbrain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aravindakshan Parthasarathy
- Departments of Biological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; Department of Otolaryngology, Harvard Medical School, and Eaton-Peabody Laboratories, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Björn Herrmann
- Department of Psychology & Brain and Mind Institute, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
| | - Edward L Bartlett
- Departments of Biological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.
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Gao F, Chen L, Zhang J. Nonuniform impacts of forward suppression on neural responses to preferred stimuli and nonpreferred stimuli in the rat auditory cortex. Eur J Neurosci 2018; 47:1320-1338. [PMID: 29761576 DOI: 10.1111/ejn.13943] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/23/2017] [Revised: 03/30/2018] [Accepted: 04/03/2018] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
In natural conditions, human and animals need to extract target sound information from noisy acoustic environments for communication and survival. However, how the contextual environmental sounds impact the tuning of central auditory neurons to target sound source azimuth over a wide range of sound levels is not fully understood. Here, we determined the azimuth-level response areas (ALRAs) of rat auditory cortex neurons by recording their responses to probe tones varying with levels and sound source azimuths under both quiet (probe alone) and forward masking conditions (preceding noise + probe). In quiet, cortical neurons responded stronger to their preferred stimuli than to their nonpreferred stimuli. In forward masking conditions, an effective preceding noise reduced the extents of the ALRAs and suppressed the neural responses across the ALRAs by decreasing the response strength and lengthening the first-spike latency. The forward suppressive effect on neural response strength was increased with increasing masker level and decreased with prolonging the time interval between masker and probe. For a portion of cortical neurons studied, the effects of forward suppression on the response strength to preferred stimuli was weaker than those to nonpreferred stimuli, and the recovery from forward suppression of the response strength to preferred stimuli was earlier than that to nonpreferred stimuli. We suggest that this nonuniform forward suppression of neural responses to preferred stimuli and to nonpreferred stimuli is important for cortical neurons to maintain their relative stable preferences for target sound source azimuth and level in noisy acoustic environments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fei Gao
- Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, Ministry of Education, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai, School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Liang Chen
- Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, Ministry of Education, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai, School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Jiping Zhang
- Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, Ministry of Education, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai, School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
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Dai J, Liu J, Zhou M, Wang W, Xu ZQD, Wang N. Neurotransmitters and Receptors Changes in Medial Nucleus of the Trapezoid Body (MNTB) of Early-Developmental Rats with Single-Side Deafness. Med Sci Monit 2018; 24:397-404. [PMID: 29352772 PMCID: PMC5786871 DOI: 10.12659/msm.908432] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2017] [Accepted: 01/03/2018] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Congenital single-side deafness (SSD) affects sound localization even after cochlear implantation (CI) in some conditions. The medial nucleus of the trapezoid body (MNTB) plays an important role in binaural benefit and sound localization, but little is known about intrinsic molecular changes in MNTB with SSD. We aimed to observe changes in MNTB in early-developmental SSD rats, including the key neurotransmitters (GABA, Gly, Glu) and major receptors (GABAa-R/GABAb-R for GABA, Gly-R for Gly, and AMPA/NMDA for Glu). MATERIAL AND METHODS The model of early-developmental SSD was acquired by right cochlear ablation at P12 and confirmed by ABR. High-performance liquid chromatography fluorescence detection (HPLC-FLD) was performed to measure the levels of neurotransmitters in MNTB. The relative expression of neurotransmitter receptors was tested by quantitative real-time PCR analysis. RESULTS (1) The right MNTB of experimental rats had an increase in GABA, Gly, and Glu at 4 weeks after right cochlear ablation (P<0.05). (2) At 2 weeks, the left MNTB of experimental rats showed increases in GABAa-R, GABAb-R, Gly-R, and AMPA, while the right MNTB showed lower expression of NMDA (P<0.05). The higher receptors in left MNTB decreased to a level at which we found no difference at 1 week for GABAa-R and GABAb-R (P>0.05), and was even reversed for Gly-R and AMPA (P<0.05). (3) Gly level was significantly increased at 2 weeks bilaterally and continued to 4 weeks in the left MNTB (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS Early-developmental SSD can lead to asymmetric distribution of neurotransmitters and receptors in MNTB, which can be the fundamental cause of defective sound localization after cochlear implantation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jinsheng Dai
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, P.R. China
| | - Jinfeng Liu
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, P.R. China
| | - Mo Zhou
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, P.R. China
| | - Wenjiao Wang
- Department of Neurobiology, Beijing Key Laboratory of Neural Regeneration and Repair, Beijing Laboratory of Brain Disorders (Ministry of Science and Technology), Beijing Institute of Brain Disorders, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
| | - Zhi-Qing David Xu
- Department of Neurobiology, Beijing Key Laboratory of Neural Regeneration and Repair, Beijing Laboratory of Brain Disorders (Ministry of Science and Technology), Beijing Institute of Brain Disorders, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
| | - Ningyu Wang
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, P.R. China
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Gao F, Kadner A, Felix RA, Chen L, Berrebi AS. Forward masking in the superior paraolivary nucleus of the rat. Brain Struct Funct 2016; 222:365-379. [PMID: 27089883 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-016-1222-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/19/2015] [Accepted: 03/31/2016] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
In natural acoustic environments, perception of acoustic stimuli depends on the recent contextual history. Forward masking describes a phenomenon whereby the detection threshold of a probe stimulus is markedly increased when it is preceded by a masking stimulus. The aim of this study was to characterize the offset response of single units in the superior paraolivary nucleus (SPON) to a forward masking paradigm. We observed two distinct response types to forward-masked stimuli, namely inhibited and facilitated responses. In the presence of a default masking stimulus, inhibited responses to probe stimuli were characterized by elevated thresholds and/or diminished spike counts, whereas facilitated responses were characterized by reduced thresholds and increased spike counts. In units with inhibited responses to the probe stimuli, probe thresholds increased and spike counts decreased as masker intensity was raised or the masker-to-probe delay was shortened. Conversely, in units with facilitated responses to the probe stimuli, probe thresholds decreased and spike counts increased as masker intensity was raised or the masker-to-probe delay was shortened. Neither inhibited nor facilitated responses to the forward masking paradigm were significantly dependent on masker frequency. These findings suggest that SPON responses are not themselves consistently subject to the same forward masking properties observed in other nuclei along the ascending auditory pathway. The potential neural mechanisms of the forward masking responses observed in the SPON are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fei Gao
- Departments of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Neurobiology and Anatomy and the Sensory Neuroscience Research Center, West Virginia University Health Sciences Center, Morgantown, WV, 26506, USA
| | - Alexandra Kadner
- Departments of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Neurobiology and Anatomy and the Sensory Neuroscience Research Center, West Virginia University Health Sciences Center, Morgantown, WV, 26506, USA
| | - Richard A Felix
- School of Biological Sciences, Washington State University, Vancouver, WA, USA
| | - Liang Chen
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Russ College of Engineering and Technology, Ohio University, Athens, OH, 45701, USA
| | - Albert S Berrebi
- Departments of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Neurobiology and Anatomy and the Sensory Neuroscience Research Center, West Virginia University Health Sciences Center, Morgantown, WV, 26506, USA.
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