Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research (CNIR), Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Suwon, Republic of Korea.
Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea.
Elife. 2020 Jan 28;9:e52228. doi: 10.7554/eLife.52228.
The inferior colliculus (IC) is the major midbrain auditory integration center, where virtually all ascending auditory inputs converge. Although the IC has been extensively studied for sound processing, little is known about the neural activity of the IC in moving subjects, as frequently happens in natural hearing conditions. Here, by recording neural activity in walking mice, we show that the activity of IC neurons is strongly modulated by locomotion, even in the absence of sound stimuli. Similar modulation was also found in hearing-impaired mice, demonstrating that IC neurons receive non-auditory, locomotion-related neural signals. Sound-evoked activity was attenuated during locomotion, and this attenuation increased frequency selectivity across the neuronal population, while maintaining preferred frequencies. Our results suggest that during behavior, integrating movement-related and auditory information is an essential aspect of sound processing in the IC.
下丘（IC）是大脑中主要的听觉整合中心，几乎所有上行听觉输入都汇聚于此。尽管 IC 已被广泛研究用于声音处理，但对于运动主体中的 IC 神经活动知之甚少，因为这种情况在自然听觉条件下经常发生。在这里，通过记录行走小鼠的神经活动，我们表明 IC 神经元的活动受到运动的强烈调制，即使在没有声音刺激的情况下也是如此。在听力受损的小鼠中也发现了类似的调制，表明 IC 神经元接收非听觉、与运动相关的神经信号。在运动过程中，声音诱发的活动被减弱，这种减弱增加了神经元群体的频率选择性，同时保持了首选频率。我们的结果表明，在行为过程中，整合与运动相关和听觉信息是 IC 中声音处理的一个重要方面。
