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Review
. 2015 Jun 18:296:55-65.
doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2015.03.053. Epub 2015 Mar 28.

Rodent auditory perception: Critical band limitations and plasticity

J King  1 , M Insanally  1 , M Jin  1 , A R O Martins  2 , J A D'amour  1 , R C Froemke  3
Affiliations
Review

Rodent auditory perception: Critical band limitations and plasticity

J King et al. Neuroscience. .

Abstract

What do animals hear? While it remains challenging to adequately assess sensory perception in animal models, it is important to determine perceptual abilities in model systems to understand how physiological processes and plasticity relate to perception, learning, and cognition. Here we discuss hearing in rodents, reviewing previous and recent behavioral experiments querying acoustic perception in rats and mice, and examining the relation between behavioral data and electrophysiological recordings from the central auditory system. We focus on measurements of critical bands, which are psychoacoustic phenomena that seem to have a neural basis in the functional organization of the cochlea and the inferior colliculus. We then discuss how behavioral training, brain stimulation, and neuropathology impact auditory processing and perception.

Keywords: audition; behavior; hearing; mouse; plasticity; rat.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Measurement of rodent critical bands. A, Tone masking by narrowband center frequency-centered noise (Ehret, 1976). Top: audiogram thresholds across tones of increasing frequency. Panels below: pure tone of a certain center frequency (asterisk), with increasingly large noisebands centered at the center frequency (red to orange to blue bands). Tone thresholds increase in the presence of a noiseband centered around the center frequency (red) and continue to increase up to a critical point (orange), at which larger noisebands result in no further increase in noise-masked tone thresholds (blue). B, Conditioned suppression in response to tones of a different frequency from target tone (Heffner and Masterton, 1980). Animals were trained to lick during presentation of a target tone of a specific frequency and to suppress licking for tones of a different frequency. Tones of varying frequency were presented to measure frequency discrimination.
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