Origins of Binaural Processing in Vertebrates

描述（由申请人提供）：陆生动物使用双耳处理来帮助它们检测、区分、定位和分离声源。中央听觉系统的所有区域都参与这些一般听觉任务的计算，但哺乳动物和鸟类脑干的几个核团在双耳处理方面的研究最为深入。最近对鱼类的观察，包括行为、中枢听觉系统形态学以及外周和中枢神经生理学，都表明不仅从外周到前脑的信息流在所有有颌脊椎动物中遵循相同的一般模式，而且听觉本身在这些类群中可能是同源的，最初是在早期鱼类中发展起来的。这反过来表明，双耳处理可能也是在早期鱼类中首先发展起来的。在这项提案中，我们的目标是系统地调查，第一次，双耳听力的策略和机制的鱼（牡蛎蟾鱼- Opsanus tau）。这些研究使用自然的声学和双边机械耳石操作的组合，在体内，将提供第一个系统的描述和分析的双耳处理的鱼，并将有助于确定在陆生动物中观察到的双耳机制是原始的，或共享的脊椎动物，以及什么机制可能是最近派生的。我们假设，双耳处理的几个基本的结构和功能方面是原始的脊椎动物的字符，我们希望他们能够在鱼类的听觉脑干中发现。这项工作将有助于我们理解听觉系统和听觉的进化，从而帮助建立一个生物和进化的背景下，人类听觉和动物模型的人类听觉可以更好地理解和应用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Terrestrial animals use binaural processing to help them detect, discriminate, locate, and segregate sounds sources. All regions of the central auditory system participate in the computations used for these general tasks of hearing, but several nuclei of the mammalian and avian brainstem have been most intensively studied with respect to binaural processing. Recent observations on fishes, including behavior, central auditory system morphology and peripheral and central neurophysiology converge in suggesting not only that the flow of information from the periphery to the epencephalon follows the same general pattern in all classes of jawed vertebrates, but that the sense of hearing itself may be homologous within these taxa, having first developed among early fishes. This, in turn, suggests that binaural processing may have first developed in early fishes, too. In this proposal, we aim to systematically investigate, for the first time, the strategies and mechanisms of binaural hearing in a fish (oyster toadfish - Opsanus tau). These studies using combinations of natural acoustic and bilateral mechanical otolith manipulation, in vivo, will provide the first systematic description and analysis of binaural processing in a fish, and will help determine what binaural mechanisms observed in terrestrial animals are primitive, or shared among vertebrates, and what mechanisms are likely to have been more recently derived. We hypothesize that several fundamental structural and functional aspects of binaural processing are primitive vertebrate characters and we expect them to be primitively revealed in the auditory brainstem of fishes. This work will contribute to our understanding of the evolution of auditory systems and the sense of hearing, and thereby help establish a biological and evolutionary context within which human hearing and animal models for human hearing can be better understood and applied.