Excitatory, inhibitory and facilitatory frequency response areas in the inferior colliculus of hearing impaired mice
Excitatory, inhibitory and facilitatory frequency response areas in the inferior colliculus of hearing impaired mice
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DOI：
10.1016/j.heares.2007.02.009
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发表时间：
2007-06-01
期刊：
影响因子：
2.8
通讯作者：
Portfors, Christine V.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Felix, Richard A., II;Portfors, Christine V.
Individuals with age-related hearing loss often have difficulty understanding complex sounds such as basic speech. The C57BL/6 mouse suffers from progressive sensorineural hearing loss and thus is an effective tool for dissecting the neural mechanisms underlying changes in complex sound processing observed in humans. Neural mechanisms important for processing complex sounds include multiple tuning and combination sensitivity, and these responses are common in the inferior colliculus (IC) of normal hearing mice. We examined neural responses in the IC of C57B1/6 mice to single and combinations of tones to examine the extent of spectral integration in the IC after age-related high frequency hearing loss. Ten percent of the neurons were tuned to multiple frequency bands and an additional 10% displayed non-linear facilitation to the combination of two different tones (combination sensitivity). No combination-sensitive inhibition was observed. By comparing these findings to spectral integration properties in the IC of normal hearing CBA/CaJ mice, we suggest that high frequency hearing loss affects some of the neural mechanisms in the IC that underlie the processing of complex sounds. The loss of spectral integration properties in the IC during aging likely impairs the central auditory system's ability to process complex sounds such as speech. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
