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Pérez-González D, Lao-Rodríguez AB, Aedo-Sánchez C, Malmierca MS. Acetylcholine modulates the precision of prediction error in the auditory cortex. eLife 2024; 12:RP91475. [PMID: 38241174 PMCID: PMC10942646 DOI: 10.7554/elife.91475] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/21/2024] Open
Abstract
A fundamental property of sensory systems is their ability to detect novel stimuli in the ambient environment. The auditory brain contains neurons that decrease their response to repetitive sounds but increase their firing rate to novel or deviant stimuli; the difference between both responses is known as stimulus-specific adaptation or neuronal mismatch (nMM). Here, we tested the effect of microiontophoretic applications of ACh on the neuronal responses in the auditory cortex (AC) of anesthetized rats during an auditory oddball paradigm, including cascade controls. Results indicate that ACh modulates the nMM, affecting prediction error responses but not repetition suppression, and this effect is manifested predominantly in infragranular cortical layers. The differential effect of ACh on responses to standards, relative to deviants (in terms of averages and variances), was consistent with the representational sharpening that accompanies an increase in the precision of prediction errors. These findings suggest that ACh plays an important role in modulating prediction error signaling in the AC and gating the access of these signals to higher cognitive levels.
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Affiliation(s)
- David Pérez-González
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, Calle Pintor Fernando GallegoSalamancaSpain
- Institute for Biomedical Research of Salamanca (IBSAL)SalamancaSpain
- Department of Basic Psychology, Psychobiology and Behavioural Science Methodology, Faculty of Psychology, Campus Ciudad Jardín, University of SalamancaSalamancaSpain
| | - Ana Belén Lao-Rodríguez
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, Calle Pintor Fernando GallegoSalamancaSpain
- Institute for Biomedical Research of Salamanca (IBSAL)SalamancaSpain
| | - Cristian Aedo-Sánchez
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, Calle Pintor Fernando GallegoSalamancaSpain
- Institute for Biomedical Research of Salamanca (IBSAL)SalamancaSpain
| | - Manuel S Malmierca
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, Calle Pintor Fernando GallegoSalamancaSpain
- Institute for Biomedical Research of Salamanca (IBSAL)SalamancaSpain
- Department of Biology and Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, University of SalamancaSalamancaSpain
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Quintela-Vega L, Morado-Díaz CJ, Terreros G, Sánchez JS, Pérez-González D, Malmierca MS. Novelty detection in an auditory oddball task on freely moving rats. Commun Biol 2023; 6:1063. [PMID: 37857812 PMCID: PMC10587131 DOI: 10.1038/s42003-023-05403-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2021] [Accepted: 10/02/2023] [Indexed: 10/21/2023] Open
Abstract
The relative importance or saliency of sensory inputs depend on the animal's environmental context and the behavioural responses to these same inputs can vary over time. Here we show how freely moving rats, trained to discriminate between deviant tones embedded in a regular pattern of repeating stimuli and different variations of the classic oddball paradigm, can detect deviant tones, and this discriminability resembles the properties that are typical of neuronal adaptation described in previous studies. Moreover, the auditory brainstem response (ABR) latency decreases after training, a finding consistent with the notion that animals develop a type of plasticity to auditory stimuli. Our study suggests the existence of a form of long-term memory that may modulate the level of neuronal adaptation according to its behavioural relevance, and sets the ground for future experiments that will help to disentangle the functional mechanisms that govern behavioural habituation and its relation to neuronal adaptation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Quintela-Vega
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, Calle Pintor Fernando Gallego 1, 37007, Salamanca, Spain
- The Salamanca Institute for Biomedical Research (IBSAL), 37007, Salamanca, Spain
| | - Camilo J Morado-Díaz
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, Calle Pintor Fernando Gallego 1, 37007, Salamanca, Spain
- The Salamanca Institute for Biomedical Research (IBSAL), 37007, Salamanca, Spain
| | - Gonzalo Terreros
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, Calle Pintor Fernando Gallego 1, 37007, Salamanca, Spain
- Instituto de Ciencias de la Salud. Universidad de O´Higgins, Rancagua, Chile
| | - Jazmín S Sánchez
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, Calle Pintor Fernando Gallego 1, 37007, Salamanca, Spain
- The Salamanca Institute for Biomedical Research (IBSAL), 37007, Salamanca, Spain
- Department of Biology and Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, University of Salamanca, 37007, Salamanca, Spain
| | - David Pérez-González
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, Calle Pintor Fernando Gallego 1, 37007, Salamanca, Spain
- The Salamanca Institute for Biomedical Research (IBSAL), 37007, Salamanca, Spain
- Department of Basic Psychology, Psychobiology and Methodology of Behavioural Sciences. Faculty of Psychology, University of Salamanca, 37005, Salamanca, Spain
| | - Manuel S Malmierca
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, Calle Pintor Fernando Gallego 1, 37007, Salamanca, Spain.
- The Salamanca Institute for Biomedical Research (IBSAL), 37007, Salamanca, Spain.
- Department of Biology and Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, University of Salamanca, 37007, Salamanca, Spain.
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Lao-Rodríguez AB, Przewrocki K, Pérez-González D, Alishbayli A, Yilmaz E, Malmierca MS, Englitz B. Neuronal responses to omitted tones in the auditory brain: A neuronal correlate for predictive coding. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2023; 9:eabq8657. [PMID: 37315139 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abq8657] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/25/2022] [Accepted: 05/09/2023] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
Prediction provides key advantages for survival, and cognitive studies have demonstrated that the brain computes multilevel predictions. Evidence for predictions remains elusive at the neuronal level because of the complexity of separating neural activity into predictions and stimulus responses. We overcome this challenge by recording from single neurons from cortical and subcortical auditory regions in anesthetized and awake preparations, during unexpected stimulus omissions interspersed in a regular sequence of tones. We find a subset of neurons that responds reliably to omitted tones. In awake animals, omission responses are similar to anesthetized animals, but larger and more frequent, indicating that the arousal and attentional state levels affect the degree to which predictions are neuronally represented. Omission-sensitive neurons also responded to frequency deviants, with their omission responses getting emphasized in the awake state. Because omission responses occur in the absence of sensory input, they provide solid and empirical evidence for the implementation of a predictive process.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ana B Lao-Rodríguez
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory (CANELAB), Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
- Institute for Biomedical Research of Salamanca (IBSAL), Salamanca, Spain
| | - Karol Przewrocki
- Computational Neuroscience Lab, Department of Neurophysiology, Donders Centre of Neuroscience, Nijmegen, Netherlands
| | - David Pérez-González
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory (CANELAB), Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
- Institute for Biomedical Research of Salamanca (IBSAL), Salamanca, Spain
- Department of Basic Psychology, Psychobiology and Methodology of Behavioral Sciences, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
| | - Artoghrul Alishbayli
- Computational Neuroscience Lab, Department of Neurophysiology, Donders Centre of Neuroscience, Nijmegen, Netherlands
| | - Evrim Yilmaz
- Computational Neuroscience Lab, Department of Neurophysiology, Donders Centre of Neuroscience, Nijmegen, Netherlands
| | - Manuel S Malmierca
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory (CANELAB), Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
- Institute for Biomedical Research of Salamanca (IBSAL), Salamanca, Spain
- Department of Cell Biology and Pathology, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
| | - Bernhard Englitz
- Computational Neuroscience Lab, Department of Neurophysiology, Donders Centre of Neuroscience, Nijmegen, Netherlands
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A Redundant Cortical Code for Speech Envelope. J Neurosci 2023; 43:93-112. [PMID: 36379706 PMCID: PMC9838705 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.1616-21.2022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/06/2021] [Revised: 08/19/2022] [Accepted: 10/23/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Animal communication sounds exhibit complex temporal structure because of the amplitude fluctuations that comprise the sound envelope. In human speech, envelope modulations drive synchronized activity in auditory cortex (AC), which correlates strongly with comprehension (Giraud and Poeppel, 2012; Peelle and Davis, 2012; Haegens and Zion Golumbic, 2018). Studies of envelope coding in single neurons, performed in nonhuman animals, have focused on periodic amplitude modulation (AM) stimuli and use response metrics that are not easy to juxtapose with data from humans. In this study, we sought to bridge these fields. Specifically, we looked directly at the temporal relationship between stimulus envelope and spiking, and we assessed whether the apparent diversity across neurons' AM responses contributes to the population representation of speech-like sound envelopes. We gathered responses from single neurons to vocoded speech stimuli and compared them to sinusoidal AM responses in auditory cortex (AC) of alert, freely moving Mongolian gerbils of both sexes. While AC neurons displayed heterogeneous tuning to AM rate, their temporal dynamics were stereotyped. Preferred response phases accumulated near the onsets of sinusoidal AM periods for slower rates (<8 Hz), and an over-representation of amplitude edges was apparent in population responses to both sinusoidal AM and vocoded speech envelopes. Crucially, this encoding bias imparted a decoding benefit: a classifier could discriminate vocoded speech stimuli using summed population activity, while higher frequency modulations required a more sophisticated decoder that tracked spiking responses from individual cells. Together, our results imply that the envelope structure relevant to parsing an acoustic stream could be read-out from a distributed, redundant population code.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Animal communication sounds have rich temporal structure and are often produced in extended sequences, including the syllabic structure of human speech. Although the auditory cortex (AC) is known to play a crucial role in representing speech syllables, the contribution of individual neurons remains uncertain. Here, we characterized the representations of both simple, amplitude-modulated sounds and complex, speech-like stimuli within a broad population of cortical neurons, and we found an overrepresentation of amplitude edges. Thus, a phasic, redundant code in auditory cortex can provide a mechanistic explanation for segmenting acoustic streams like human speech.
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Stein J, von Kriegstein K, Tabas A. Predictive encoding of pure tones and FM-sweeps in the human auditory cortex. Cereb Cortex Commun 2022; 3:tgac047. [PMID: 36545253 PMCID: PMC9764222 DOI: 10.1093/texcom/tgac047] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/05/2022] [Revised: 11/05/2022] [Accepted: 11/10/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Expectations substantially influence perception, but the neural mechanisms underlying this influence are not fully understood. A prominent view is that sensory neurons encode prediction error with respect to expectations on upcoming sensory input. Although the encoding of prediction error has been previously demonstrated in the human auditory cortex (AC), previous studies often induced expectations using stimulus repetition, potentially confounding prediction error with neural habituation. These studies also measured AC as a single population, failing to consider possible predictive specializations of different AC fields. Moreover, the few studies that considered prediction error to stimuli other than pure tones yielded conflicting results. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to systematically investigate prediction error to subjective expectations in auditory cortical fields Te1.0, Te1.1, Te1.2, and Te3, and two types of stimuli: pure tones and frequency modulated (FM) sweeps. Our results show that prediction error is elicited with respect to the participants' expectations independently of stimulus repetition and similarly expressed across auditory fields. Moreover, despite the radically different strategies underlying the decoding of pure tones and FM-sweeps, both stimulus modalities were encoded as prediction error in most fields of AC. Altogether, our results provide unequivocal evidence that predictive coding is the general encoding mechanism in AC.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Katharina von Kriegstein
- Chair of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Technical University Dresden, Bamberger Str. 7, Dresden 01187, Germany
| | - Alejandro Tabas
- Chair of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Technical University Dresden, Bamberger Str. 7, Dresden 01187, Germany
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Pérez-González D, Schreiner TG, Llano DA, Malmierca MS. Alzheimer's Disease, Hearing Loss, and Deviance Detection. Front Neurosci 2022; 16:879480. [PMID: 35720686 PMCID: PMC9201340 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2022.879480] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/19/2022] [Accepted: 05/09/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Age-related hearing loss is a widespread condition among the elderly, affecting communication and social participation. Given its high incidence, it is not unusual that individuals suffering from age-related hearing loss also suffer from other age-related neurodegenerative diseases, a scenario which severely impacts their quality of life. Furthermore, recent studies have identified hearing loss as a relevant risk factor for the development of dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease, although the underlying associations are still unclear. In order to cope with the continuous flow of auditory information, the brain needs to separate repetitive sounds from rare, unexpected sounds, which may be relevant. This process, known as deviance detection, is a key component of the sensory perception theory of predictive coding. According to this framework, the brain would use the available incoming information to make predictions about the environment and signal the unexpected stimuli that break those predictions. Such a system can be easily impaired by the distortion of auditory information processing that accompanies hearing loss. Changes in cholinergic neuromodulation have been found to alter auditory deviance detection both in humans and animal models. Interestingly, some theories propose a role for acetylcholine in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common type of dementia. Acetylcholine is involved in multiple neurobiological processes such as attention, learning, memory, arousal, sleep and/or cognitive reinforcement, and has direct influence on the auditory system at the levels of the inferior colliculus and auditory cortex. Here we comment on the possible links between acetylcholine, hearing loss, and Alzheimer’s disease, and association that is worth further investigation.
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Affiliation(s)
- David Pérez-González
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory (Lab 1), Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León (INCYL), University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain.,Institute for Biomedical Research of Salamanca (IBSAL), Salamanca, Spain
| | - Thomas G Schreiner
- Department of Electrical Measurements and Materials, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, "Gheorghe Asachi" Technical University of Iasi, Iaşi, Romania.,Department of Neurology, "Gr. T. Popa" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iaşi, Romania
| | - Daniel A Llano
- Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, United States.,The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, Urbana, IL, United States.,Carle Neuroscience Institute, Urbana, IL, United States
| | - Manuel S Malmierca
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory (Lab 1), Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León (INCYL), University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain.,Institute for Biomedical Research of Salamanca (IBSAL), Salamanca, Spain.,Department of Cell Biology and Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
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The posterior auditory field is the chief generator of prediction error signals in the auditory cortex. Neuroimage 2021; 242:118446. [PMID: 34352393 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118446] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/10/2021] [Revised: 07/26/2021] [Accepted: 08/02/2021] [Indexed: 01/13/2023] Open
Abstract
The auditory cortex (AC) encompasses distinct fields subserving partly different aspects of sound processing. One essential function of the AC is the detection of unpredicted sounds, as revealed by differential neural activity to predictable and unpredictable sounds. According to the predictive coding framework, this effect can be explained by repetition suppression and/or prediction error signaling. The present study investigates functional specialization of the rat AC fields in repetition suppression and prediction error by combining a tone frequency oddball paradigm (involving high-probable standard and low-probable deviant tones) with two different control sequences (many-standards and cascade). Tones in the control sequences were comparable to deviant events with respect to neural adaptation but were not violating a regularity. Therefore, a difference in the neural activity between deviant and control tones indicates a prediction error effect, whereas a difference between control and standard tones indicates a repetition suppression effect. Single-unit recordings revealed by far the largest prediction error effects for the posterior auditory field, while the primary auditory cortex, the anterior auditory field, the ventral auditory field, and the suprarhinal auditory field were dominated by repetition suppression effects. Statistically significant repetition suppression effects occurred in all AC fields, whereas prediction error effects were less robust in the primary auditory cortex and the anterior auditory field. Results indicate that the non-lemniscal, posterior auditory field is more engaged in context-dependent processing underlying deviance-detection than the other AC fields, which are more sensitive to stimulus-dependent effects underlying differential degrees of neural adaptation.
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Casado-Román L, Carbajal GV, Pérez-González D, Malmierca MS. Prediction error signaling explains neuronal mismatch responses in the medial prefrontal cortex. PLoS Biol 2020; 18:e3001019. [PMID: 33347436 PMCID: PMC7785337 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001019] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/31/2020] [Revised: 01/05/2021] [Accepted: 12/03/2020] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
The mismatch negativity (MMN) is a key biomarker of automatic deviance detection thought to emerge from 2 cortical sources. First, the auditory cortex (AC) encodes spectral regularities and reports frequency-specific deviances. Then, more abstract representations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) allow to detect contextual changes of potential behavioral relevance. However, the precise location and time asynchronies between neuronal correlates underlying this frontotemporal network remain unclear and elusive. Our study presented auditory oddball paradigms along with "no-repetition" controls to record mismatch responses in neuronal spiking activity and local field potentials at the rat medial PFC. Whereas mismatch responses in the auditory system are mainly induced by stimulus-dependent effects, we found that auditory responsiveness in the PFC was driven by unpredictability, yielding context-dependent, comparatively delayed, more robust and longer-lasting mismatch responses mostly comprised of prediction error signaling activity. This characteristically different composition discarded that mismatch responses in the PFC could be simply inherited or amplified downstream from the auditory system. Conversely, it is more plausible for the PFC to exert top-down influences on the AC, since the PFC exhibited flexible and potent predictive processing, capable of suppressing redundant input more efficiently than the AC. Remarkably, the time course of the mismatch responses we observed in the spiking activity and local field potentials of the AC and the PFC combined coincided with the time course of the large-scale MMN-like signals reported in the rat brain, thereby linking the microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic levels of automatic deviance detection.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lorena Casado-Román
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory (CANELAB), Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León (INCYL), Salamanca, Spain
- Institute for Biomedical Research of Salamanca (IBSAL), Salamanca, Spain
| | - Guillermo V. Carbajal
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory (CANELAB), Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León (INCYL), Salamanca, Spain
- Institute for Biomedical Research of Salamanca (IBSAL), Salamanca, Spain
| | - David Pérez-González
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory (CANELAB), Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León (INCYL), Salamanca, Spain
- Institute for Biomedical Research of Salamanca (IBSAL), Salamanca, Spain
| | - Manuel S. Malmierca
- Cognitive and Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory (CANELAB), Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León (INCYL), Salamanca, Spain
- Institute for Biomedical Research of Salamanca (IBSAL), Salamanca, Spain
- Department of Biology and Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
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