Identifying Neurosensory Solutions to the Binding Problem in Animal Behavior

确定动物行为中约束问题的神经感觉解决方案

• 批准号: 1452831
• 负责人: Mark Bee
• 金额: $ 68万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-05-15 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1452831&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Identifying; Neurosensory; Solutions; Binding; Problem

Human and animal behavior is guided by continuous and often complex sensory input. Nervous systems must parse this input stream and bind together those pieces corresponding to actual objects in the environment. As an illustration, consider the command to STOP. The human visual system effortlessly binds an octagonal shape with red coloration into a unified visual percept that elicits stopping behavior. Likewise, different sounds in the spoken word "stop" become bound into an auditory percept that also elicits stopping behavior. Efforts to understand how nervous systems solve these so-called "binding problems" have advanced the fields of cognitive and computational neuroscience. By comparison, much less is known about how nonhuman animals create bound percepts that correspond to the variety of things of interest to animals (e.g. prey, predators, mates, communication signals). Hence, important knowledge gaps remain concerning the brain mechanisms that allow animals to solve binding problems. This project integrates behavioral and electrophysiological experiments to uncover general mechanisms of auditory perceptual binding in an animal model for which vocal communication in noisy social environments is key to successful reproduction. This research is important because basic knowledge of neurosensory mechanisms that enable animals to solve auditory binding problems could benefit society by helping to improve hearing prosthetics and speech recognition systems, which perform poorly in noisy acoustic scenes. This research will also lead to answering new questions about how neural systems shape the evolution of communication behaviors. In addition, the project will create research experiences for a minimum of 15 undergraduates, advance the training of a postdoctoral scholar, and integrate research and teaching with public outreach aimed at elementary school kids in a large metropolitan area. The project investigates auditory binding in green treefrogs (Hyla cinerea), a well-known animal model in studies of hearing and sound communication. Aim 1 uses behavioral experiments to identify cues that promote auditory binding. Two experiments will test the hypothesis that synchronous onsets/offsets, common spatial origin, and harmonic relatedness function to bind together separate parts of the frequency spectrum of vocalizations analogous to formants in human vowel sounds. Aim 2 involves electrophysiological recordings from single neurons in the auditory midbrain to identify neural correlates of auditory binding. Three experiments will test the hypothesis that changes in the responses of neurons sensitive to spectral combinations correlate with changes in the behavioral decisions made in response to manipulations of the auditory binding cues from Aim 1.

人类和动物的行为是由连续的，往往是复杂的感官输入。神经系统必须解析这个输入流，并将与环境中的实际对象相对应的那些片段绑定在一起。举个例子，考虑一下STOP命令。人类的视觉系统毫不费力地将一个带有红色的八角形形状结合成一个统一的视觉概念，从而消除停止行为。同样地，在口语单词“停止”中的不同声音被绑定到一个听觉感知中，也会激发停止行为。了解神经系统如何解决这些所谓的“绑定问题”的努力推动了认知和计算神经科学领域的发展。相比之下，对于非人类动物如何创造与动物感兴趣的各种事物（例如猎物，捕食者，配偶，通信信号）相对应的绑定感知，我们知之甚少。因此，关于允许动物解决绑定问题的大脑机制，仍然存在重要的知识空白。该项目整合了行为和电生理实验，以揭示动物模型中听觉感知绑定的一般机制，其中在嘈杂的社会环境中的语音通信是成功繁殖的关键。这项研究很重要，因为使动物能够解决听觉绑定问题的神经感觉机制的基本知识可以通过帮助改善听力假肢和语音识别系统来造福社会，这些系统在嘈杂的声学场景中表现不佳。这项研究还将回答有关神经系统如何塑造通信行为演变的新问题。此外，该项目将为至少15名本科生创造研究经验，推进博士后学者的培训，并将研究和教学与面向大都市地区小学生的公共宣传相结合。该项目研究了绿色树蛙（Hyla cinerea）的听觉绑定，这是一种著名的听觉和声音交流研究动物模型。目的1使用行为实验来识别促进听觉绑定的线索。两个实验将测试的假设，即同步的起始/偏移，共同的空间起源，和谐波相关性的功能结合在一起的独立部分的频谱的发声类似于共振峰在人类元音的声音。目的2涉及听觉中脑单个神经元的电生理记录，以确定听觉绑定的神经相关。三个实验将测试这一假设，即神经元对光谱组合敏感的反应的变化与对来自目标1的听觉绑定线索的操纵做出的行为决策的变化相关。

项目成果

Female preferences for the spectral content of advertisement calls in Cope’s gray treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis)

科普灰树蛙 (Hyla chrysoscelis) 中雌性对广告叫声的光谱内容的偏好

• DOI: 10.1007/s00359-022-01575-w
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Journal of Comparative Physiology A
• 作者: Gupta, Saumya;Bee, Mark A.
• 通讯作者: Bee, Mark A.