Glycinergic inhibition tunes coincidence detection in the auditory brainstem

Michael H. Myoga, Simon Lehnert, Christian Leibold, Felix Felmy and Benedikt Grothe ()
Additional contact information
Michael H. Myoga: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Simon Lehnert: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Christian Leibold: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Felix Felmy: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Benedikt Grothe: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Neurons in the medial superior olive (MSO) detect microsecond differences in the arrival time of sounds between the ears (interaural time differences or ITDs), a crucial binaural cue for sound localization. Synaptic inhibition has been implicated in tuning ITD sensitivity, but the cellular mechanisms underlying its influence on coincidence detection are debated. Here we determine the impact of inhibition on coincidence detection in adult Mongolian gerbil MSO brain slices by testing precise temporal integration of measured synaptic responses using conductance-clamp. We find that inhibition dynamically shifts the peak timing of excitation, depending on its relative arrival time, which in turn modulates the timing of best coincidence detection. Inhibitory control of coincidence detection timing is consistent with the diversity of ITD functions observed in vivo and is robust under physiologically relevant conditions. Our results provide strong evidence that temporal interactions between excitation and inhibition on microsecond timescales are critical for binaural processing.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4790 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms4790

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4790

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().