Synaptic mechanisms underlying temporally precise information processing in the VNLL

在单耳（对侧）调幅声刺激下，外侧小网膜腹侧核腹侧部分的神经元表现出高度精确的放电模式，放电率高，潜伏期低。因此，它们被认为在人类语言等同向发声过程中起着重要作用。在这个项目中，我们评估了一个假设，即这些神经元的兴奋性突触电流的显著双相形状是理解其反应特性的关键特征。为此，我们将定量描述传入突触的突触动力学，并使用电生理记录和这些神经元的计算模型的组合来研究这些电流的超阈值整合。最后，我们将在实验和模型中使用从人类语音信号中获得的电导序列来量化响应模式的信息传递和刺激可判别性。

Neurons in the ventral part of the ventral nucleus of the lateral lemniscus (VNLL) show highly precise temporal discharge patterns with high firing rates and low latencies upon monaural (contralateral) stimulation with amplitude-modulated sounds. Therefore they are believed to play an important role in the processing of conspecific vocalization such as human speech. In this project we evaluate the hypothesis that the markedly biphasic shape of these neurons' excitatory synaptic currents is a key feature in understanding their response properties. To this end, we will quantitatively describe the synaptic dynamics of the afferent synapses and study the supra-threshold integration of these currents using a combination of electrophysiological recordings and a computational model of these neurons. Finally, we will quantify the information transfer and stimulus discriminability of the response patterns using conductance trains derived from human speech signals in experiments and model.