Department of Animal Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Liesel-Beckmann-Str. 4, 85354, Freising, Germany.
Department of Animal Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Liesel-Beckmann-Str. 4, 85354, Freising, Germany.
Hear Res. 2020 Mar 15;388:107904. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2020.107904. Epub 2020 Jan 30.
Bats use a large repertoire of calls for social communication, which are often characterized by temporal amplitude and frequency modulations. As bats are considered to be among the few mammalian species capable of vocal learning, the perception of temporal sound modulations should be crucial for juvenile bats to develop social communication abilities. However, the post-natal development of auditory processing of temporal modulations has not been investigated in bats, so far. Here we use the minimally invasive technique of recording auditory brainstem responses to measure the envelope following response (EFR) to sinusoidally amplitude modulated noise (range of modulation frequencies: 11-130 Hz) in three juveniles (p8-p72) of the bat, Phyllostomus discolor. In two out of three animals, we show that although amplitude modulation processing is basically developed at p8, EFRs maturated further over a period of about two weeks until p33. Maturation of the EFR generally took longer for higher modulation frequencies (87-130 Hz) than for lower modulation frequencies (11-58 Hz).
蝙蝠在社会交流中使用大量的叫声，这些叫声通常具有时间幅度和频率调制的特征。由于蝙蝠被认为是少数具有发声学习能力的哺乳动物之一，因此对时间声音调制的感知对于幼年蝙蝠发展社交交流能力应该是至关重要的。然而，到目前为止，蝙蝠对时间调制的听觉处理的产后发育还没有被研究过。在这里，我们使用最小侵入性的记录听觉脑干反应的技术，在三种蝙蝠（Phyllostomus discolor）的幼体（p8-p72）中测量对正弦幅度调制噪声（调制频率范围：11-130 Hz）的包络跟随反应（EFR）。在三只动物中的两只中，我们表明，尽管在 p8 时已经基本发育了幅度调制处理，但 EFR 在大约两周的时间内进一步成熟，直到 p33。EFR 的成熟通常需要更长的时间用于更高的调制频率（87-130 Hz），而不是用于更低的调制频率（11-58 Hz）。
