Project 11

Binaural effects on responses of auditory midbrain neurons

In the auditory midbrain of mammals, neurons are known to have a diversity of responses to sound when controlled acoustic stimuli are presented to the ear that supplies the dominant synaptic drive to those neurons. However, there is no good investigation in the literature of how these diverse “monaural” responses patterns may be shaped by two possible factors 1) spontaneous afferent input from the opposite ear converging onto the same neurons and 2) acoustically-driven input from the opposite ear when sound presented to one ear is loud enough to physically leak across the head. Such information is vital to a proper interpretation of the responses seen in the auditory midbrain, both in normal animals and in animals with various peripheral auditory pathologies. In this project, students will use metal microelectrodes to record the activity of single neurons in the auditory midbrain of anaesthetized animals and will study the effects on response patterns caused by experimental elimination of inputs from the non-dominant ear.