Covey E, Casseday J H
Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle 98195-1525, USA.
Annu Rev Physiol. 1999;61:457-76. doi: 10.1146/annurev.physiol.61.1.457.
Echolocating bats use audition to guide much of their behavior. As in all vertebrates, their lower brainstem contains a number of parallel auditory pathways that provide excitatory or inhibitory outputs differing in their temporal discharge patterns and latencies. These pathways converge in the auditory midbrain, where many neurons are tuned to biologically important parameters of sound, including signal duration, frequency-modulated sweep direction, and the rate of periodic frequency or amplitude modulations. This tuning to biologically relevant temporal patterns of sound is created through the interplay of the time-delayed excitatory and inhibitory inputs to midbrain neurons. Because the tuning process requires integration over a relatively long time period, the rate at which midbrain auditory neurons respond corresponds to the cadence of sounds rather than their fine structure and may provide an output that is closely matched to the rate at which motor systems operate.
使用回声定位的蝙蝠利用听觉来指导其大部分行为。与所有脊椎动物一样，它们的低位脑干包含许多并行的听觉通路，这些通路提供在时间放电模式和潜伏期上不同的兴奋性或抑制性输出。这些通路在听觉中脑汇聚，在那里许多神经元被调整到声音的生物学重要参数，包括信号持续时间、调频扫描方向以及周期性频率或幅度调制的速率。这种对生物学相关声音时间模式的调整是通过对中脑神经元的时间延迟兴奋性和抑制性输入的相互作用产生的。由于调整过程需要在相对较长的时间段内进行整合，中脑听觉神经元的反应速率对应于声音的节奏而非其精细结构，并且可能提供与运动系统运作速率紧密匹配的输出。
