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- Title
Across Species "Natural Ablation" Reveals the Brainstem Source of a Noninvasive Biomarker of Binaural Hearing.
- Authors
Benichoux, Victor; Ferber, Alexander; Hunt, Samuel; Hughes, Ethan; Tollin, Daniel
- Abstract
The binaural interaction component (BIC) of the auditory brainstem response is a noninvasive electroencephalographic signature of neural processing of binaural sounds. Despite its potential as a clinical biomarker, the neural structures and mechanism that generate the BIC are not known. We explore here the hypothesis that the BIC emerges from excitatory--inhibitory interactions in auditory brainstem neurons. We measured the BIC in response to click stimuli while varying interaural time differences (ITDs) in subjects of either sex from five animal species. Species had head sizes spanning a 3.5-fold range and correspondingly large variations in the sizes of the auditory brainstem nuclei known to process binaural sounds [the medial superior olive (MSO) and the lateral superior olive (LSO)]. The BIC was reliably elicited in all species, including those that have small or inexistent MSOs. In addition, the range of ITDs where BIC was elicited was independent of animal species, suggesting that the BIC is not a reflection of the processing of ITDs per se. Finally, we provide a model of the amplitude and latency of the BIC peak, which is based on excitatory--inhibitory synaptic interactions, without assuming any specific arrangement of delay lines. Our results show that the BIC is preserved across species ranging from mice to humans. We argue that this is the result of generic excitatory--inhibitory synaptic interactions at the level of the LSO, and thus best seen as reflecting the integration of binaural inputs as opposed to their spatial properties.
- Subjects
AUDITORY evoked response; BINAURAL hearing aids; INTERAURAL time difference; OLIVARY nucleus; SIGNAL processing
- Publication
Journal of Neuroscience, 2018, Vol 38, Issue 40, p8563
- ISSN
0270-6474
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1211-18.2018