NEURAL MECHANISMS OF SOUND SOURCE IN VERTEBRATES

描述：本研究计划的总体目标是确定 简单的脊椎动物听觉系统是如何产生 听力是在比较和进化的背景下定义的。 我们认为 所有脊椎动物的听觉功能 主要用于检测、识别、分类和定位 有生命和无生命的声源。 另外，我们假设 确定声源的神经机制包括 在脊椎动物中广泛共享的原始成分和策略 物种，包括人类。 这一观点激励和指导了 初步的工作表明，尽管广泛的 与四足动物相比，鱼类内耳的差异， 在心理物理学和神经生理学的研究中， 金鱼似乎是无法区分的基本方面， 陆生动物，包括哺乳动物。 目前提出的行为，神经生理学和神经解剖学 实验的目的是帮助评估假设的意义， 听力及其潜在的神经机制在人类中广泛共享， 数量最多最成功的脊椎动物鱼类 这些比较 金鱼和四足动物的研究结果将有助于揭示 在脊椎动物的耳朵中发生变化的尺寸。 两个基本 将研究声源确定方面：声源 定位和声源识别和分类。 这些 研究将在三个分析层次上进行：行为 （心理物理学和缩放类型的研究），单细胞神经生理学， 听觉系统的不同层次，以及比较神经解剖学。 的 目标是比较鱼类与人类和其他四足动物， 声源确定的神经机制。 这些结果 将有助于人类动物模型的开发和评估 倾听，并帮助建立比较和进化的背景下， 人类的听觉可以更好地理解。

DESCRIPTION: The overall goals of this research program are to determine how simple vertebrate auditory systems function to give rise to the sense of hearing defined in a comparative and evolutionary context. We argue that the sense of hearing functions in species of all vertebrate classes primarily in the detection, identification, classification, and the location of both animate and inanimate sound sources. In addition, we hypothesize that the neural mechanisms underlying sound source determination consist of primitive components and strategies that are widely shared among vertebrate species, including human beings. This view motivates and guides the proposed experiments.Preliminary work has demonstrated that in spite of wide differences in the inner ears of fishes compared with tetrapods, the sense of hearing revealed in psychophysical and neurophysiological studies on goldfish appears to be indistinguishable in fundamental aspects from that of terrestrial animals, including mammals. The present proposed behavioral, neurophysiological, and neuroanatomical experiments are designed to help evaluate the hypothesis that the sense of hearing and its underlying neural mechanisms are widely shared among the most numerous and successful vertebrates, the fishes. Comparisons of these results with those for goldfish and tetrapods will help reveal the dimensions on which variation occurs among vertebrate ears. Two fundamental aspects of sound source determination will be studied: sound source localization and sound source identification and classification. These studies will be carried out at three levels of analysis: behavior (psychophysics and scaling type of studies), single-cell neurophysiology at various levels of the auditory system, and comparative neuroanatomy. The goals are to compare fishes with humans and other tetrapods with respect to the neural mechanisms underlying sound source determination. These results will help in the development and evaluation of animal models for human hearing and help establish the comparative and evolutionary contexts within which the human sense of hearing can be better understood.