The effects of fear conditioning and spatial separation on the coherence of the responses to deep superior colliculus stimulation in awake male rats.

This study explored how fear conditioning and perceptual spatial separation affect the neural responses to target stimuli in the deep layers of the superior colliculus (deepSC) of awake rats. After electrodes were surgically implanted in the bilateral deepSC of all rats and a habituation period was completed, pre-fear conditioning tests, fear conditioning and conditioning control procedures, and post-fear conditioning tests were conducted in the awake state. The results showed that under the condition of perceptual spatial separation, fear conditioning significantly increased the stimulus-response coherence (S-R coherence) of the fine structure in the contralateral deepSC. However, no significant changes were observed in the amplitudes of the fine structure and envelope components before and after fear conditioning. S-R coherence is an important indicator of the precision of temporal expression, and fear conditioning and perceptual spatial separation are two common methods for introducing auditory attention. Therefore, based on the results of this study, we speculate that auditory attention improves the precision of the brainstem's response to target signals rather than enhancing the response strength. This study provides new insights into the neural mechanisms of auditory attention and the role of the deep layers of the superior colliculus in attention regulation.