Binaural characteristics of units in the owl's brainstem auditory pathway: precursors of restricted spatial receptive fields
- Creators
- Moiseff, A.
- Konishi, M.
Abstract
The barn owl uses binaural phase and intensity differences for sound localization. These two cues also determine the receptive fields of specialized neurons in the inferior colliculus. The main aim of this study was to investigate where neuronal sensitivity to the binaural cues emerges in the brainstem auditory nuclei, and how this sensitivity reaches the neurons in the inferior colliculus. The owl's phase- sensitive neurons are selective to microsecond phase differences of high frequency signals, unlike mammalian phase-sensitive neurons which are restricted to low frequency signals. In certain nuclei virtually all of the neurons are sensitive to either phase differences or intensity differences, but not to both. These nuclei form two distinctly separate pathways that converge at the inferior colliculus where neurons selective to both phase and intensity differences occur. In contrast to the mammalian auditory system, the owl's phase- and intensity difference-sensitive pathways are not segregated into low frequency and high frequency channels.
Additional Information
© 1983 by Society for Neuroscience. For the first six months after publication SfN's license will be exclusive. Beginning six months after publication the Work will be made freely available to the public on SfN's website to copy, distribute, or display under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Received December 13, 1982; Revised June 27, 1983; Accepted June 28, 1983. We thank Eugene Akutagawa for histological assistance, Herb Adams for constructing a new stereotaxic device, and Mike Walsh and his staff for their help in designing and maintaining much of our instrumentation. We appreciate the helpful comments of Eric Knudsen and Terry Takahashi. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant NS14617 to M. K. and Helen Hay Whitney and Del E. Webb postdoctoral fellowships to A. M.Attached Files
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC6564646
- Eprint ID
- 62545
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20151202-113506470
- NS14617
- NIH
- Del E. Webb Foundation
- Helen Hay Whitney Foundation
- Created
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2015-12-02Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field