Development of frequency tuning shaped by spatial cue reliability in the barn owl's auditory midbrain.

ABSTRACT: Sensory systems preferentially strengthen responses to stimuli based on their reliability at conveying accurate information. While previous reports demonstrate that the brain reweighs cues based on dynamic changes in reliability, how the brain may learn and maintain neural responses to sensory statistics expected to be stable over time is unknown. The barn owl's midbrain features a map of auditory space where neurons compute horizontal sound location from the interaural time difference (ITD). Frequency tuning of midbrain map neurons correlates with the most reliable frequencies for the neurons' preferred ITD (Cazettes et al., 2014). Removal of the facial ruff led to a specific decrease in the reliability of high frequencies from frontal space. To directly test whether permanent changes in

SUBMITTER: Shadron K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10238092 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature