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Neural population coding of sound level adapts to stimulus statistics

Nature Neuroscience volume 8, pages 1684–1689 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Mammals can hear sounds extending over a vast range of sound levels with remarkable accuracy. How auditory neurons code sound level over such a range is unclear; firing rates of individual neurons increase with sound level over only a very limited portion of the full range of hearing. We show that neurons in the auditory midbrain of the guinea pig adjust their responses to the mean, variance and more complex statistics of sound level distributions. We demonstrate that these adjustments improve the accuracy of the neural population code close to the region of most commonly occurring sound levels. This extends the range of sound levels that can be accurately encoded, fine-tuning hearing to the local acoustic environment.

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Figure 1: Adjustments in responses of inferior collicular neurons to the mean sound level.
Figure 2: Adjustments in neural responses improve population coding accuracy near the mean sound level.
Figure 3: Neural adjustments to stimulus variance.
Figure 4: Neural adjustments to stimulus bimodality.
Figure 5: Time course of neural adaptation.
Figure 6: Responses of inferior collicular neurons to changes in sound level.

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Latham and J. Linden for discussions and C. Micheyl, T. Marquardt and J. Ashmore for critical reading of the manuscript. This work was supported by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People and the Medical Research Council (UK).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physiology and University College London Ear Institute, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Isabel Dean, Nicol S Harper & David McAlpine

  2. Centre for Mathematics and Physics in the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Nicol S Harper

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  1. Isabel Dean
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Correspondence to Isabel Dean.

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Dean, I., Harper, N. & McAlpine, D. Neural population coding of sound level adapts to stimulus statistics. Nat Neurosci 8, 1684–1689 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1541

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