Neural Coding Primate Vocalizations in Auditory Cortex

灵长类动物听觉皮层发声的神经编码

• 批准号: 6795039
• 负责人: Christopher DiMattina
• 金额: $ 4.18万
• 依托单位: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-02-28 至 2005-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6795039
• 关键词: Callithricidae; auditory cortex; auditory pathways; communication behavior; electronic recording system; fluorescent dye /probe; hearing; histology; neural information processing; noise biological effect; predoctoral investigator; psychoacoustics; sensory mechanism; sound frequency; sound perception; vocalization

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this thesis proposal is to investigate the neural coding of species-specific communication sounds in the common marmoset (callithrix jacchus jacchus) using statistically accurate synthetic vocalizations. These virtual vocalizations are defined almost entirely in terms of a set of acoustical parameters which have been measured from hundreds of actual vocalizations recorded from animals in our colony. These parameters can be systematically manipulated in order to determine precisely which acoustical properties of the vocalization are important for vocalization selective responses in the auditory cortex. These stimuli represent a tremendous improvement over the single vocalization token stimuli which have been employed in studies of cortical vocalization encoding. One issue which we hope to address is what role harmonic and temporal combination sensitivity plays in shaping responses to vocalizations, as these mechanisms have been found to be important for vocalization selectivity in the songbird and echolocating bat. Another issue which we are interested in investigating is the relative importance of spectral and envelope information in vocalization processing. The virtual vocalization stimuli allow us to manipulate the frequency and amplitude information in the call independently so that this question can be rigorously addressed. Lastly we are interested in recording from multiple regions of the auditory cortex, in particular the lateral belt fields AL and CL, in order to critically test the recently proposed theory that the AL field exhibits a higher degree of vocalization selectivity than CL.

描述（由申请人提供）：本论文的目标是利用统计上准确的合成发声来研究普通狨猴（callithrix jacchus jacchus）物种特异性交流声音的神经编码。这些虚拟的发声几乎完全是根据一组声学参数来定义的，这些参数是从我们殖民地动物记录的数百个实际发声中测量出来的。这些参数可以被系统地操纵，以便精确地确定发声的哪些声学特性对听觉皮层的发声选择性反应是重要的。这些刺激代表了在皮层发声编码研究中使用的单一发声标记刺激的巨大改进。我们希望解决的一个问题是和声和时间组合敏感性在形成对发声的反应中所起的作用，因为这些机制已被发现对鸣禽和回声定位蝙蝠的发声选择性很重要。我们感兴趣的另一个问题是频谱和包络信息在发声处理中的相对重要性。虚拟发声刺激使我们能够独立地操纵呼叫中的频率和幅度信息，从而可以严格解决这个问题。最后，我们对听觉皮层的多个区域的记录很感兴趣，特别是侧带区AL和CL，以严格检验最近提出的理论，即AL区比CL区表现出更高程度的发声选择性。