TY - JOUR
T1 - Dorsal Cochlear Nucleus of the Rat
T2 - Representation of Complex Sounds in Ears Damaged by Acoustic Trauma
AU - Li, Yang
AU - Ropp, Tessa Jonne F.
AU - May, Bradford J.
AU - Young, Eric D.
N1 - Funding Information:
Thanks are due to Troy Rubin for help with recording procedures, Qian Gao for programming and other assistance with computing, Ron Atkinson for electronics support, Kerrie Tiedemann for assistance with animals, and Phyllis Taylor for technical assistance. The work was supported by grants from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders RC1-DC010594, R01-DC000115, and P30-DC005211.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Association for Research in Otolaryngology.
PY - 2015/8/3
Y1 - 2015/8/3
N2 - Acoustic trauma damages the cochlea but secondarily modifies circuits of the central auditory system. Changes include decreases in inhibitory neurotransmitter systems, degeneration and rewiring of synaptic circuits, and changes in neural activity. Little is known about the consequences of these changes for the representation of complex sounds. Here, we show data from the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) of rats with a moderate high-frequency hearing loss following acoustic trauma. Single-neuron recording was used to estimate the organization of neurons’ receptive fields, the balance of inhibition and excitation, and the representation of the spectra of complex broadband stimuli. The complex stimuli had random spectral shapes (RSSs), and the responses were fit with a model that allows the quality of the representation and its degree of linearity to be estimated. Tone response maps of DCN neurons in rat are like those in other species investigated previously, suggesting the same general organization of this nucleus. Following acoustic trauma, abnormal response types appeared. These can be interpreted as reflecting degraded tuning in auditory nerve fibers plus loss of inhibitory inputs in DCN. Abnormal types are somewhat more prevalent at later times (103–376 days) following the exposure, but not significantly so. Inhibition became weaker in post-trauma neurons that retained inhibitory responses but also disappeared in many neurons. The quality of the representation of spectral shape, measured by sensitivity to the spectral shapes of RSS stimuli, was decreased following trauma; in fact, neurons with abnormal response types responded mainly to overall stimulus level, and not spectral shape.
AB - Acoustic trauma damages the cochlea but secondarily modifies circuits of the central auditory system. Changes include decreases in inhibitory neurotransmitter systems, degeneration and rewiring of synaptic circuits, and changes in neural activity. Little is known about the consequences of these changes for the representation of complex sounds. Here, we show data from the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) of rats with a moderate high-frequency hearing loss following acoustic trauma. Single-neuron recording was used to estimate the organization of neurons’ receptive fields, the balance of inhibition and excitation, and the representation of the spectra of complex broadband stimuli. The complex stimuli had random spectral shapes (RSSs), and the responses were fit with a model that allows the quality of the representation and its degree of linearity to be estimated. Tone response maps of DCN neurons in rat are like those in other species investigated previously, suggesting the same general organization of this nucleus. Following acoustic trauma, abnormal response types appeared. These can be interpreted as reflecting degraded tuning in auditory nerve fibers plus loss of inhibitory inputs in DCN. Abnormal types are somewhat more prevalent at later times (103–376 days) following the exposure, but not significantly so. Inhibition became weaker in post-trauma neurons that retained inhibitory responses but also disappeared in many neurons. The quality of the representation of spectral shape, measured by sensitivity to the spectral shapes of RSS stimuli, was decreased following trauma; in fact, neurons with abnormal response types responded mainly to overall stimulus level, and not spectral shape.
KW - acoustic trauma
KW - dorsal cochlear nucleus
KW - inhibition
KW - model
KW - neuropathy
KW - random spectral shape
KW - rat
KW - response map
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U2 - 10.1007/s10162-015-0522-z
DO - 10.1007/s10162-015-0522-z
M3 - Article
C2 - 25967754
AN - SCOPUS:84934441014
SN - 1525-3961
VL - 16
SP - 487
EP - 505
JO - JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology
JF - JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology
IS - 4
ER -