Projections of Cochlear Nucleus Axons

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This research is directed towards understanding how auditory information is processed and coded by nerve cells in the cochlear nucleus, a portion of the brain pathways that are involved in hearing. The auditory environment provides a rich and complex array of information from a myriad of sounds from different sources. Some of this information, such as speech sounds, is highly relevant to us, while much of it is disregarded as extraneous noise. The auditory central nervous system converts auditory information into neural signals which are later analyzed at different levels in the brain. In order to understand how auditory information processing occurs, this research is being conducted to determine what aspects of auditory information are being coded by individual types of nerve cells in the cochlear nucleus as well as where cochlear neurons send this information in the brain. The activity of single nerve cells is recorded and analyzed using microelectrodes inserted into single neurons, the response to auditory stimulation is recorded, and a dye is injected into the nerve cell in order to identify it using histological techniques. By locating and analyzing this labelled neuron using both light and electron microscopy, it is possible to answer a number of basic questions which include: (1) Do certain types of cells encode specific parts of the auditory signal? (2) What part of the brain do these cells relay information to? (3) What are the interactions between individual types of neurons? These studies are essential to understanding how such a complex sensory system provides us with the experience of hearing that is so crucial to perception and cognitive experience.