John & Edward Coleman Memorial Laboratory, Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, UK.
Cereb Cortex. 2024 Sep 3;34(9). doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhae364.
Cortical processing of auditory information can be affected by interspecies differences as well as brain states. Here we compare multifeature spectro-temporal receptive fields (STRFs) and associated input/output functions or nonlinearities (NLs) of neurons in primary auditory cortex (AC) of four mammalian species. Single-unit recordings were performed in awake animals (female squirrel monkeys, female, and male mice) and anesthetized animals (female squirrel monkeys, rats, and cats). Neuronal responses were modeled as consisting of two STRFs and their associated NLs. The NLs for the STRF with the highest information content show a broad distribution between linear and quadratic forms. In awake animals, we find a higher percentage of quadratic-like NLs as opposed to more linear NLs in anesthetized animals. Moderate sex differences of the shape of NLs were observed between male and female unanesthetized mice. This indicates that the core AC possesses a rich variety of potential computations, particularly in awake animals, suggesting that multiple computational algorithms are at play to enable the auditory system's robust recognition of auditory events.
听觉信息的皮质处理会受到种间差异和大脑状态的影响。在这里，我们比较了四种哺乳动物初级听觉皮层（AC）中神经元的多特征频谱-时间感受野（STRF）及其相关的输入/输出函数或非线性（NL）。在清醒动物（雌性松鼠猴、雌性和雄性小鼠）和麻醉动物（雌性松鼠猴、大鼠和猫）中进行了单细胞记录。神经元反应被建模为由两个 STRF 和它们相关的 NL 组成。具有最高信息量的 STRF 的 NL 呈现出从线性到二次形式的广泛分布。在清醒动物中，我们发现与麻醉动物相比，具有二次样 NL 的比例更高。在未麻醉的雄性和雌性小鼠之间，NL 的形状存在中等的性别差异。这表明核心 AC 具有丰富的潜在计算多样性，特别是在清醒动物中，这表明多种计算算法在起作用，以使听觉系统能够稳健地识别听觉事件。
