Temporal encoding precision of bat auditory neurons tuned to target distance deteriorates on the way to the cortex

During echolocation, bats estimate distance to avoid obstacles and capture moving prey. The primary distance cue is the delay between the bat’s emitted echolocation pulse and the return of an echo. In the bat’s auditory system, echo delay-tuned neurons that only respond to pulse–echo pairs having a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of Comparative Physiology Vol. 202; no. 3; pp. 195 - 202
Main Authors Macias, Silvio, Hechavarria, Julio C, Kossl, Manfred
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.03.2016
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Acoustic Stimulation
Acoustics
Action Potentials - physiology
Animal Physiology
Animals
Auditory Cortex - physiology
Auditory Pathways - physiology
Auditory Perception - physiology
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Chiroptera - physiology
Echolocation - physiology
Inferior Colliculi - cytology
Life Sciences
Neurons - physiology
Neurosciences
Original Paper
Reaction Time - physiology
Signal Detection, Psychological
Statistics, Nonparametric
Zoology
Bats
Spiking precision
Delay tuning
Inferior colliculus
Auditory cortex
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Summary:During echolocation, bats estimate distance to avoid obstacles and capture moving prey. The primary distance cue is the delay between the bat’s emitted echolocation pulse and the return of an echo. In the bat’s auditory system, echo delay-tuned neurons that only respond to pulse–echo pairs having a specific echo delay serve target distance calculation. Accurate prey localization should benefit from the spike precision in such neurons. Here we show that delay-tuned neurons in the inferior colliculus of the mustached bat respond with higher temporal precision, shorter latency and shorter response duration than those of the auditory cortex. Based on these characteristics, we suggest that collicular neurons are best suited for a fast and accurate response that could lead to fast behavioral reactions while cortical neurons, with coarser temporal precision and longer latencies and response durations could be more appropriate for integrating acoustic information over time. The latter could be important for the formation of biosonar images.
Bibliography:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00359-016-1067-2
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ISSN:0340-7594
1432-1351
DOI:10.1007/s00359-016-1067-2