Coleman Memorial Laboratory, Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, USA.
Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, USA.
Nat Commun. 2020 Feb 27;11(1):1102. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-14835-7.
Auditory cortex neurons nonlinearly integrate synaptic inputs from the thalamus and cortex, and generate spiking outputs for simple and complex sounds. Directly comparing synaptic and spiking activity can determine whether this input-output transformation is stimulus-dependent. We employ in vivo whole-cell recordings in the mouse primary auditory cortex, using pure tones and broadband dynamic moving ripple stimuli, to examine properties of functional integration in tonal (TRFs) and spectrotemporal (STRFs) receptive fields. Spectral tuning in STRFs derived from synaptic, subthreshold and spiking responses proves to be substantially more selective than for TRFs. We describe diverse spectral and temporal modulation preferences and distinct nonlinearities, and their modifications between the input and output stages of neural processing. These results characterize specific processing differences at the level of synaptic convergence, integration and spike generation resulting in stimulus-dependent transformation patterns in the primary auditory cortex.
听觉皮层神经元从丘脑和皮层的突触输入中进行非线性整合，并为简单和复杂声音产生尖峰输出。直接比较突触和尖峰活动可以确定这种输入-输出转换是否依赖于刺激。我们在小鼠初级听觉皮层中采用体内全细胞记录，使用纯音和宽带动态移动波纹刺激，研究音调（TRF）和spectrotemporal（STRF）感受野中功能整合的特性。源自突触、亚阈和尖峰反应的 STRF 的光谱调谐被证明比 TRF 具有更高的选择性。我们描述了不同的光谱和时间调制偏好以及独特的非线性，以及它们在神经处理的输入和输出阶段之间的变化。这些结果表征了突触汇聚、整合和尖峰产生水平上的特定处理差异，导致初级听觉皮层中依赖于刺激的转换模式。
