人和动物经常从复杂声学环境中探测和分辨有意义的目标声信息，然而与之相关的神经机理尚未完全阐明。本项目用神经电生理学方法，研究听皮层和下丘听神经元对其频率-强度反应域内偏好声刺激和非偏好声刺激的反应随声学环境的变化而动态变化的规律；研究听皮层和下丘听神经元在复杂声学环境下对目标声频率信息编码的突触机制、参与的神经递质和受体；比较听皮层和下丘神经元在复杂声学环境下对目标声频率信息编码机制的异同；用行为学和电生理学相结合的方法，研究注意对听皮层神经元在噪声环境下编码目标声频率信息的影响及相关的神经机理。这些研究将为我们进一步理解脑从复杂声学环境中提取目标声信息的原理提供实验依据和理论依据。

Human and animals often detect and discriminate meaningful auditory target information in complex acoustic environments, however, the correlated neural mechanisms are not fully understood. In the present proposal, using electro-neurophysiological method, we investigate how the responses of neurons in the auditory cortex and inferior colliculus to preferred and non-preferred stimuli in the frequency-level response areas vary dynamically with the change of complex acoustical environments. We study the synaptic mechanism that neurons in the auditory cortex and inferior colliculus encode the frequency information of a target sound in complex acoustic environments，and the related neurotransmitters and receptors that involve in this process. The similarity and differences in neural and synaptic coding mechanism when encoding auditory target information in complex acoustic environments will be compared between auditory cortex and inferior colliculus. Using behavioral and electrophysiolgical methods, we also study how attention impact the neural coding of frequency information of target sound in background noise conditions in the auditory cortex. These studies will provide experimental evidences and theoretic basis on our understanding on how the brain extracts auditory target information in complex acoustic environments.