Kishan Amar U, Lee Charles C, Winer Jeffery A
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115.
Open J Neurosci. 2011 Oct 12;1.
The olivocochlear (OC) pathway is the source of major feedback control of ascending acoustic information. Two main patterns of axonal branching are evident at this and other levels of the auditory pathway: long-distance collaterals and branches involved in feedback-control loops. Only a minority of OC neurons project to both cochlea, consistent with a role for the system in sound localization. OC branches to the ventral cochlear nucleus provide the anatomical substrate for a feedback control loop that could aid in modulating the intensity of acoustic information being conveyed to higher cortical levels while still dampening the overall intensity of signaling from the cochlea itself.
橄榄耳蜗(OC)通路是上行听觉信息主要反馈控制的来源。在听觉通路的这一水平及其他水平,轴突分支有两种主要模式:长距离侧支和参与反馈控制回路的分支。只有少数OC神经元投射到双侧耳蜗,这与该系统在声音定位中的作用一致。OC到蜗腹侧核的分支为一个反馈控制回路提供了解剖学基础,该回路有助于调节传递到更高皮层水平的听觉信息强度,同时仍能减弱来自耳蜗本身的信号总体强度。