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Specialized neuronal adaptation for preserving input sensitivity

Nature Neuroscience volume 11, pages 1259–1261 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Some neurons in auditory cortex respond to recent stimulus history by adapting their response functions to track stimulus statistics directly, as might be expected. In contrast, some neurons respond to loud sounds by adjusting their response functions away from high intensities and consequently remain sensitive to softer sounds. In marmoset monkey auditory cortex, the latter type of adaptation appears to exist only in neurons tuned to stimulus intensity.

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Figure 1: Neuronal rate-intensity adaptation in response to stimulus amplitude statistics.
Figure 2: Influence of immediately preceding stimulus intensities on spiking rates.

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. Kocher for assistance with animal training and D. Oakley for assistance with software programming. This work was supported by the McDonnell Center for Higher Brain Function, the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation and US National Institutes of Health grant DC008880.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience and Neuroengineering, One Brookings Drive, Box 1097, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, 63130, Missouri, USA

    Paul V Watkins & Dennis L Barbour

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  1. Paul V Watkins
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  2. Dennis L Barbour
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Contributions

D.L.B conceived of the experiment, D.L.B. and P.V.W. designed the experiment, P.V.W. collected and analyzed the data and D.L.B. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dennis L Barbour.

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Supplementary Figures 1 and 2 and Supplementary Methods (PDF 163 kb)

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Watkins, P., Barbour, D. Specialized neuronal adaptation for preserving input sensitivity. Nat Neurosci 11, 1259–1261 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2201

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