Spectro-temporal receptive fields of auditory neurons in the grassfrog. III. Analysis of the stimulus-event relation for natural stimuli.

The stimulus-event relation of single units in the auditory midbrain area, the torus semicircularis, of the anaesthetized grassfrog (Rana temporaria L.) during stimulation with a wide ensemble of natural stimuli, was analysed using first and second order statistical analysis techniques. The average stimulus preceding the occurrence of action potentials, in general, did not prove to give very informative results. The second order procedure consisted in the determination of the average dynamic power spectrum of the pre-event stimuli, following procedures as described elsewhere (Aertsen and Johannesma, 1980' Aertsen et al., 1980). The outcome of this analysis was filtered with the overall power spectrum of the complete stimulus ensemble in order to correct for its non-uniform spectral composition. The "stimulus-filtered" average pre-event dynamic spectrum gives a first indication of the "spectro-temporal receptive field" of a neuron under natural stimulus conditions. Results for a limited number of recordings are presented and, globally, compared to the outcome of an analogous analysis of experiments with tonal stimuli.