Abstract
The effects of nonlinear interactions between different sound frequencies on the responses of neurons in primary auditory cortex (AI) have only been investigated using two-tone paradigms. Here we stimulated with relatively dense, Poisson-distributed trains of tone pips (with frequency ranges spanning five octaves, 16 frequencies /octave, and mean rates of 20 or 120 pips /s), and examined within-frequency (or auto-frequency) and cross-frequency interactions in three types of AI unit responses by computing second-order “Poisson-Wiener” auto- and cross-kernels. Units were classified on the basis of their spectrotemporal receptive fields (STRFs) as “double-peaked”, “single-peaked” or “peak-valley”. Second-order interactions were investigated between the two bands of excitatory frequencies on double-peaked STRFs, between an excitatory band and various non-excitatory bands on single-peaked STRFs, and between an excitatory band and an inhibitory sideband on peak-valley STRFs. We found that auto-frequency interactions (i.e., those within a single excitatory band) were always characterized by a strong depression of (first-order) excitation that decayed with the interstimulus lag up to ∼200 ms. That depression was weaker in cross-frequency compared to auto-frequency interactions for ∼25% of dual-peaked STRFs, evidence of “combination sensitivity” for the two bands. Non-excitatory and inhibitory frequencies (on single-peaked and peak-valley STRFs, respectively) typically weakly depressed the excitatory response at short interstimulus lags (<50 ms), but weakly facilitated it at longer lags (∼50–200 ms). Both the depression and especially the facilitation were stronger for interactions with inhibitory frequencies rather than just non-excitatory ones. Finally, facilitation in single-peaked and peak-valley units decreased with increasing stimulus density. Our results indicate that the strong combination sensitivity and cross-frequency facilitation suggested by previous two-tone-paradigm studies are much less pronounced when using more temporally-dense stimuli.
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Acknowledgements
Arnaud Noreña and Boris Gourévich assisted with the data collection. Greg Shaw provided programming support. This work was supported by the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Campbell McLaurin Chair for Hearing Deficiencies.
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Pienkowski, M., Eggermont, J.J. Nonlinear cross-frequency interactions in primary auditory cortex spectrotemporal receptive fields: a Wiener–Volterra analysis. J Comput Neurosci 28, 285–303 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10827-009-0209-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10827-009-0209-8