Synaptic mechanisms underlying temporally precise information processing in the VNLL

外侧丘脑腹侧核腹侧核(VNLL)腹侧神经元在单耳(对侧)调幅刺激时表现出高放电频率和低潜伏期的高精确度的短暂放电模式。因此，它们被认为在人类语音等同种发声过程中起着重要作用。在这个项目中，我们评估了这样的假设，即这些神经元的兴奋性突触电流的显着双相形状是理解它们的反应特性的关键特征。为此，我们将定量描述传入突触的突触动力学，并结合电生理记录和这些神经元的计算模型来研究这些电流的阈值上整合。最后，我们将在实验和模型中使用从人类语音信号中提取的电导训练来量化响应模式的信息传递和刺激可识别性。

Neurons in the ventral part of the ventral nucleus of the lateral lemniscus (VNLL) show highly precise temporal discharge patterns with high firing rates and low latencies upon monaural (contralateral) stimulation with amplitude-modulated sounds. Therefore they are believed to play an important role in the processing of conspecific vocalization such as human speech. In this project we evaluate the hypothesis that the markedly biphasic shape of these neurons' excitatory synaptic currents is a key feature in understanding their response properties. To this end, we will quantitatively describe the synaptic dynamics of the afferent synapses and study the supra-threshold integration of these currents using a combination of electrophysiological recordings and a computational model of these neurons. Finally, we will quantify the information transfer and stimulus discriminability of the response patterns using conductance trains derived from human speech signals in experiments and model.