Outer- and middle-ear contributions to presbycusis in the Brown Norway rat

Sheep as a large animal model for hearing research: comparison to common laboratory animals and humans

Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), caused by pathology in the cochlea, is the most common type of hearing loss in humans. It is generally irreversible with very few effective pharmacological treatments available to prevent the degenerative changes or minimise the impact. Part of this has been attributed to difficulty of translating "proof-of-concept" for novel treatments established in small animal models to human therapies. There is an increasing interest in the use of sheep as a large animal model. In this article, we review the small and large animal models used in pre-clinical hearing research such as mice, rats, chinchilla, guinea pig, rabbit, cat, monkey, dog, pig, and sheep to humans, and compare the physiology, inner ear anatomy, and some of their use as model systems for SNHL, including cochlear implantation surgeries. Sheep have similar cochlear anatomy, auditory threshold, neonatal auditory system development, adult and infant body size, and number of birth as humans. Based on these comparisons, we suggest that sheep are well-suited as a potential translational animal model that bridges the gap between rodent model research to the clinical use in humans. This is especially in areas looking at changes across the life-course or in specific areas of experimental investigation such as cochlear implantation and other surgical procedures, biomedical device development and age-related sensorineural hearing loss research. Combined use of small animals for research that require higher throughput and genetic modification and large animals for medical translation could greatly accelerate the overall translation of basic research in the field of auditory neuroscience from bench to clinic.

An analysis of nonlinear dynamics underlying neural activity related to auditory induction in the rat auditory cortex

A sound interrupted by silence is perceived as discontinuous. However, when high-intensity noise is inserted during the silence, the missing sound may be perceptually restored and be heard as uninterrupted. This illusory phenomenon is called auditory induction. Recent electrophysiological studies have revealed that auditory induction is associated with the primary auditory cortex (A1). Although experimental evidence has been accumulating, the neural mechanisms underlying auditory induction in A1 neurons are poorly understood. To elucidate this, we used both experimental and computational approaches. First, using an optical imaging method, we characterized population responses across auditory cortical fields to sound and identified five subfields in rats. Next, we examined neural population activity related to auditory induction with high temporal and spatial resolution in the rat auditory cortex (AC), including the A1 and several other AC subfields. Our imaging results showed that tone-burst stimuli interrupted by a silent gap elicited early phasic responses to the first tone and similar or smaller responses to the second tone following the gap. In contrast, tone stimuli interrupted by broadband noise (BN), considered to cause auditory induction, considerably suppressed or eliminated responses to the tone following the noise. Additionally, tone-burst stimuli that were interrupted by notched noise centered at the tone frequency, which is considered to decrease the strength of auditory induction, partially restored the second responses from the suppression caused by BN. To phenomenologically mimic the neural population activity in the A1 and thus investigate the mechanisms underlying auditory induction, we constructed a computational model from the periphery through the AC, including a nonlinear dynamical system. The computational model successively reproduced some of the above-mentioned experimental results. Therefore, our results suggest that a nonlinear, self-exciting system is a key element for qualitatively reproducing A1 population activity and to understand the underlying mechanisms.

Genetic diversity contributes to abnormalities in pain behaviors between young and old rats

Aging has profound yet unpredictable effects on pain perception and incidence of anxiety disorders. However, the mechanisms underlying age-related pathologies are confounded by contradictory observations in rodent models. Therefore, the goal of our study was to test the hypothesis that genetic variability contributes to age-related pain behaviors and susceptibility to anxiety. To address this hypothesis, we examined pain and anxiety-like behavior in young or old Brown Norway (BN), Fisher 344, and BN/F344 (F1), three rat strains used in studies to evaluate the effect of aging. Mechanosensitive thresholds were assessed using the Von Frey assay, and visceral pain sensitivity was measured via the visceromotor response to colorectal distension. Anxiety-like behavior and exploration was quantified in the elevated plus maze. In the BN strain, old rats exhibited increased mechanosensitive thresholds compared to young rats; however, age did not affect visceral sensitivity in this strain. In F344-BN rats, the number of abdominal contractions induced by the highest colonic distension pressure was significantly lower in old rats. However, following colonic sensitization, a difference was no longer apparent. In the F-344 strain, visceral hypersensitivity following afferent sensitization was evident in young rats at all distension pressures but was not observed in older animals at 20 mmHg. Aging significantly reduced maze exploration across all strains. Our data demonstrate that age- and strain-related alterations exist in pain behavior and highlight the effects of aging on exploratory behavior. These findings suggest that strain differences contribute to the controversial data on the effects of aging on pain perception.

Auditory brainstem response (ABR) abnormalities across the life span of rats prenatally exposed to alcohol

BACKGROUND

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is a leading cause of neurodevelopmental impairments (NDIs) in developed countries. Sensory deficits can play a major role in NDI, yet few studies have investigated the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on sensory function. In addition, there is a paucity of information on the lifelong effects of prenatal alcohol exposure. Thus, we sought to investigate the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on auditory function across the life span in an animal model. Based on prior findings with prenatal alcohol exposure and other forms of adverse prenatal environments, we hypothesized that animals prenatally exposed to alcohol would show an age-dependent pattern of (i) hearing and neurological abnormalities as postweanling pups, (ii) a substantial dissipation of such abnormalities in young adulthood, and (iii) a resurgence of such abnormalities in middle-aged adulthood.

METHODS

Pregnant rats were randomly assigned to an untreated control (CON), a pair-fed control (PFC), or an alcohol-treated (ALC) group. The ALC dams were gavaged with 6 mg/kg alcohol daily from gestation day (GD) 6 to 21. The PFC dams were gavaged daily from GD6 to GD21 with an isocaloric and isovolumetric water-based solution of maltose-dextrins and pair-fed to the ALC dams. The CON dams were the untreated group to which the ALC and CON groups were compared. Hearing and neurological functions in the offspring were assessed with the auditory brainstem response (ABR) at the postnatal ages of 22, 220, and 520 days.

RESULTS

In accord with our hypothesis, ABR abnormalities were first observed in the postweanling pups, largely dissipated in young adulthood, and then resurged in middle-aged adulthood. This age-related pattern suggests that the ALC pups had a developmental delay that dissipated in young adulthood and an enhanced age-related deterioration that occurred in middle-aged adulthood. Such a pattern is consistent with the fetal programming hypothesis of adult-onset diseases (the Barker hypothesis).

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings have important clinical implications for the assessment and management of (i) childhood hearing disorders and their comorbidities (i.e., speech-and-language, learning, and attention deficit disorders) and (ii) enhanced age-related hearing and neurological degeneration in middle-aged adulthood that can result from prenatal alcohol exposure. We recommend hearing evaluation be a part of any long-term follow-up for FAS patients and patients exposed to any adverse prenatal environment.

Recovery of functional and structural age-related changes in the rat primary auditory cortex with operant training

Cognitive decline is a virtually universal aspect of the aging process. However, its neurophysiological basis remains poorly understood. We describe here more than 20 age-related cortical processing deficits in the primary auditory cortex of aging versus young rats that appear to be strongly contributed to by altered cortical inhibition. Consistent with these changes, we recorded in old rats a decrease in parvalbumin-labeled inhibitory cortical neurons. Furthermore, old rats were slower to master a simple behavior, with learning progressions marked by more false-positive responses. We then examined the effect of intensive auditory training on the primary auditory cortex in these aged rats by using an oddball discrimination task. Following training, we found a nearly complete reversal of the majority of previously observed functional and structural cortical impairments. These findings suggest that age-related cognitive decline is a tightly regulated plastic process, and demonstrate that most of these age-related changes are, by their fundamental nature, reversible.

The acoustical cues to sound location in the rat: measurements of directional transfer functions

The acoustical cues for sound location are generated by spatial- and frequency-dependent filtering of propagating sound waves by the head and external ears. Although rats have been a common model system for anatomy, physiology, and psychophysics of localization, there have been few studies of the acoustical cues available to rats. Here, directional transfer functions (DTFs), the directional components of the head-related transfer functions, were measured in six adult rats. The cues to location were computed from the DTFs. In the frontal hemisphere, spectral notches were present for frequencies from approximately 16 to 30 kHz; in general, the frequency corresponding to the notch increased with increases in source elevation and in azimuth toward the ipsilateral ear. The maximum high-frequency envelope-based interaural time differences (ITDs) were 130 mus, whereas low-frequency (<3.5 kHz) fine-structure ITDs were 160 mus; both types of ITDs were larger than predicted from spherical head models. Interaural level differences (ILDs) strongly depended on location and frequency. Maximum ILDs were <10 dB for frequencies <8 kHz and were as large as 20-40 dB for frequencies >20 kHz. Removal of the pinna eliminated the spectral notches, reduced the acoustic gain and ILDs, altered the acoustical axis, and reduced the ITDs.