Midbrain encodes sound detection behavior without auditory cortex

Abstract Hearing involves analyzing the physical attributes of sounds and integrating the results of this analysis with other sensory, cognitive and motor variables in order to guide adaptive behavior. The auditory cortex is considered crucial for the integration of acoustic and contextual information and is thought to share the resulting representations with subcortical auditory structures via its vast descending projections. By imaging cellular activity in the corticorecipient shell of the inferior colliculus of mice engaged in a sound detection task, we show that the majority of neurons encode information beyond the physical attributes of the stimulus and that the animals’ behavior can be decoded from the activity of those neurons with a high degree of accuracy. Surprisingly, this was also the case in mice in which auditory cortical input to the midbrain had been removed by bilateral cortical lesions. This illustrates that subcortical auditory structures have access to a wealth of non-acoustic information and can, independently of the auditory cortex, carry much richer neural representations than previously thought..

Medienart:

Preprint

Erscheinungsjahr:

2024

Erschienen:

2024

Enthalten in:

bioRxiv.org - (2024) vom: 29. März Zur Gesamtaufnahme - year:2024

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Lee, Tai-Ying [VerfasserIn]
Weissenberger, Yves [VerfasserIn]
King, Andrew J [VerfasserIn]
Dahmen, Johannes C [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext [kostenfrei]

Themen:

570
Biology

doi:

10.1101/2023.06.07.544013

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

XBI039831418