Bioacoustics, hearing and the integrative physiology of bats

蝙蝠的生物声学、听力和综合生理学

• 批准号: 293142-2010
• 负责人: Faure, Paul
• 金额: $ 1.97万
• 依托单位: McMaster University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2012-01-01 至 2013-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=506454
• 关键词: Bioacoustics; hearing; integrative; physiology; bats

The long-term goal of my research program is to understand how the central nervous system encodes and decodes information to produce behaviour. To address this goal in the short-term, I study sound production and the physiology of hearing. Research on mammalian bioacoustics and hearing will be of enormous benefit to understanding behaviours as diverse as speech recognition and music perception by humans and echolocation by bats. My electrophysiology research seeks to determine the physiological mechanisms underlying a specialized form of auditory temporal processing--neural tuning to sound duration--and to relate the mechanism(s) to hearing and behaviour. Studies are conducted on a model hearing organism: the echolocating bat. Bats are ideal subjects for bioacoustical and hearing research because we know what sounds are important to bats and this simplifies the effort of discovering physiological mechanisms. In the auditory midbrain of bats and other mammals there exist neurons with responses highly tuned to signal duration, with different cells having different best durations. The neural circuits that create these duration-tuned neurons are still unclear. This proposal seeks to record action potentials in response to acoustic stimulation to determine how spectral and temporal information is encoded by the mammalian auditory midbrain, and to understand the roles of synaptic excitation and inhibition in creating duration-tuned neurons. To complement our electrophysiology research, we will also create mathematical models that mirror known neuroanatomical connections in the central auditory system to evaluate the biological plausibility of the proposed network connections. We will also study how bat pups change the duration and bandwidth of their frequency modulated (FM) vocalizations as they age. My research on bioacoustics and the physiology of temporal processing in bats addresses broad issues in science, such as why there are multiple processing pathways in the central auditory system and what role they play in hearing (perception) and behaviour (sound production). Knowledge of how the brain analyzes sounds also has direct implications for the diagnosis and treatment of hearing and language disorders.

我的研究计划的长期目标是了解中枢神经系统如何编码和解码信息以产生行为。为了在短期内实现这一目标，我研究了声音产生和听觉生理学。对哺乳动物生物声学和听觉的研究将对理解人类的语音识别和音乐感知以及蝙蝠的回声定位等多种行为大有裨益。我的电生理学研究旨在确定一种特殊形式的听觉时间处理的生理机制-神经调谐到声音持续时间-并将该机制与听觉和行为联系起来。研究是在一种听觉生物的模型上进行的：回声定位蝙蝠。蝙蝠是生物声学和听觉研究的理想对象，因为我们知道什么声音对蝙蝠很重要，这简化了发现生理机制的努力。在蝙蝠和其他哺乳动物的听觉中脑中，存在对信号持续时间高度调谐的神经元，不同的细胞具有不同的最佳持续时间。创造这些持续时间调谐神经元的神经回路仍然不清楚。该提案旨在记录响应于声刺激的动作电位，以确定哺乳动物听觉中脑如何编码频谱和时间信息，并了解突触兴奋和抑制在创建持续时间调谐神经元中的作用。为了补充我们的电生理学研究，我们还将创建数学模型，反映中枢听觉系统中已知的神经解剖学连接，以评估拟议网络连接的生物相容性。我们还将研究蝙蝠幼崽如何随着年龄的增长而改变其调频（FM）发声的持续时间和带宽。我对生物声学和蝙蝠时间处理生理学的研究解决了科学中的广泛问题，例如为什么中央听觉系统中有多个处理途径，以及它们在听觉（感知）和行为（声音产生）中扮演什么角色。大脑如何分析声音的知识对听力和语言障碍的诊断和治疗也有直接的影响。