Physiology and Psychophysics of the Precedence Effect

描述(由申请人提供)：拟议研究的总体目标是继续研究清醒、行为正常的猫在复杂环境中的听力。优先效应的许多方面已经通过人类的心理物理实验进行了广泛的测量。不太常见的是动物的行为和生理实验。更不常见的是在每个受试者身上同时测量行为和生理的实验。这些在清醒表现的猫身上同时进行的行为和生理实验很重要，因为它们在逐一试验的基础上告诉我们动物在哪里识别出一个呈现的声源，以及潜在的神经与该声源识别的位置相关联。已知猫存在优先效应，麻醉猫下丘的单个单位与定位优势和回声阈值相关，但关于优先效应的许多方面仍不清楚，包括回声抑制和Franssen效应的建立和破坏。拟议训练的目的是在结合心理物理和神经生理学方法的同时，研究回声对猫声音定位的影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of the proposed research is to continue the investigation of hearing in complex environments in awake, behaving cats. Many aspects of the precedence effect have been extensively measured using psychophysical experiments in humans. Less prevalent are the behavioral and physiological experiments in animals. Even less common are the experiments where behavior and physiology are measured simultaneously in each subject. These simultaneous behavioral and physiological experiments in awake behaving cats are important because they tell us on a trial-by-trial basis exactly where the animals identify a presented sound source and the underlying neural correlates to that source's identified location. It is already known that cats experience the precedence effect and that single units in the inferior colliculus of anesthetized cats show correlates to localization dominance and echo thresholds, but much is still unknown about many of the aspects of the precedence effect including the buildup and breakdown of echo suppression and the Franssen Effect. The objective of the proposed training is to investigate the influence of echoes on sound localization while combining the psychophysical and neurophysiological approaches in cats.