Re: Function of Cochlear Nucleus cell types

["Richard F. Lyon" <dicklyon@xxxxxxx>]

On CN function, the best publications people suggested are:

1. Rhode, William S., and Steven Greenberg. "Physiology of the cochlear nuclei."The mammalian auditory pathway: Neurophysiology 2 (1992): 94-152. - http://web.mit.edu/hst.723/www/ThemePapers/CochlearNucleus/Rhode92.pdf

2. Cochlear Nucleus, Eric D Young And Donata Oertel - http://web1.johnshopkins.edu/chb/research/CNSOB.pdf  or http://books.google.com/books?id=KBkR8PwU6ewC&pg=PA125

chapter 4 in The Synaptic Organization of the Brain, edited by Gordon M. Shepherd, 5th ed. 2003

3. Wang, Huan, et al. "Auditory information coding by modeled cochlear nucleus neurons." Journal of computational neuroscience 30.3 (2011): 529-542. (author Werner Hemmert sent me a copy)

several on DCN discrimination of head-related transfer functions (HRTFs), spectral cues used for vertical sound localization.  There's a lot more on this topic:

4. Reiss, Lina AJ, and Eric D. Young. "Spectral edge sensitivity in neural circuits of the dorsal cochlear nucleus." The Journal of neuroscience 25.14 (2005): 3680-3691. - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/14/3680.long

5. May, Bradford J. "Role of the dorsal cochlear nucleus in the sound localization behavior of cats." Hearing research 148.1 (2000): 74-87. - http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/course/other/hst.722/OldFiles/www/Topics/DCN/May2000.pdf

What's clear is that different cell types in DCN and VCN make several parallel differently processed representations.  Getting more specific, there's good info on binaural and monaural localization processing, some on spectral, temporal, and envelope enhancement, etc., but in general it seems to remain rather vague (to me); but I haven't finished reading, so maybe it will get more clear.

Several people also shared a bit on not-yet-published ideas; hopefully they'll let us know when the time is right.

Dick

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 3:02 PM, Richard F. Lyon <dicklyon@xxxxxxx> wrote:

That's an interesting question, too, Randy, but likely not very related to cochlear nucleus.

I've gotten a few pointers so far, and requests to share the results.  I'll do that.

Dick

On 1/5/2014 9:25 PM, Richard F. Lyon wrote:

I've been trying to understand and summarize what's known or theorized about the function of various cochlear nucleus cell types.  There's a lot of info on response patterns to tone bursts, speech, tones in noise, etc., and a lot known about where some of the different cell types are in the CN and where they project to, but I'm having trouble finding much on the "why" or the signal processing function that these different patterns serve.  The synchrony-enhancing bushy cells project to the olivary complex, so it makes sense that they are part of the binaural localization function.  But what about all the others? Where can I find good theories about these?

Dick