Forward suppression in the auditory cortex is frequency-specific

Scholes, C, Palmer, AR and Sumner, CJ ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2573-7418, 2011. Forward suppression in the auditory cortex is frequency-specific. European Journal of Neuroscience, 33 (7), pp. 1240-1251. ISSN 0953-816X

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Abstract

We investigated how physiologically observed forward suppression interacts with stimulus frequency in neuronal responses in the guinea pig auditory cortex. The temporal order and frequency proximity of sounds influence both their perception and neuronal responses. Psychophysically, preceding sounds (conditioners) can make successive sounds (probes) harder to hear. These effects are larger when the two sounds are spectrally similar. Physiological forward suppression is usually maximal for conditioner tones near to a unit’s characteristic frequency (CF), the frequency to which a neuron is most sensitive. However, in most physiological studies, the frequency of the probe tone and CF are identical, so the role of unit CF and probe frequency cannot be distinguished. Here, we systemically varied the frequency of the probe tone, and found that the tuning of suppression was often more closely related to the frequency of the probe tone than to the unit’s CF, i.e. suppressed tuning was specific to probe frequency. This relationship was maintained for all measured gaps between the conditioner and the probe tones. However, when the probe frequency and CF were similar, CF tended to determine suppressed tuning. In addition, the bandwidth of suppression was slightly wider for off-CF probes. Changes in tuning were also reflected in the firing rate in response to probe tones, which was maximally reduced when probe and conditioner tones were matched in frequency. These data are consistent with the idea that cortical neurons receive convergent inputs with a wide range of tuning properties that can adapt independently.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	European Journal of Neuroscience
Creators:	Scholes, C., Palmer, A.R. and Sumner, C.J.
Publisher:	John Wiley & Sons Ltd. in association with the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies
Date:	April 2011
Volume:	33
Number:	7
ISSN:	0953-816X
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2010.07568.x DOI
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jill Tomkinson
Date Added:	13 Mar 2019 11:26
Last Modified:	13 Mar 2019 11:26
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/35983

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