Neurons in various sensory systems show some level of spontaneous firing in the absence of sensory stimuli. In the auditory system spontaneous firing has been shown at all levels of the auditory pathway from spiral ganglion neurons in the cochlea to…
Tinnitus is the perception of a sound that has no external source. Sound stimuli can suppress spontaneous firing in auditory neurons long after stimulus offset. It is unknown how changes in sound stimulus parameters affect this forward suppression.…
The high prevalence of noise-induced and age-related hearing loss in the general population has warranted the use of animal models to study the etiology of these pathologies. Quick and accurate auditory threshold determination is a prerequisite for…
Recently prepulse inhibition of the acoustic startle reflex (ASR) became a popular technique for tinnitus assessment in laboratory animals. This method confers a significant advantage over the previously used time-consuming behavioral approaches…
The mechanisms underlying sound-evoked suppression of neuronal firing in the auditory system are poorly understood. To explore these mechanisms in the inferior colliculus (IC), agonists and antagonists targeting different groups of metabotropic…
Neurons in the inferior colliculus (IC), one of the major integrative centers of the auditory system, process acoustic information converging from almost all nuclei of the auditory brain stem. During this integration, excitatory and inhibitory inputs…
The central nucleus of the inferior colliculus (IC) is a major integrative center in the central auditory system. It receives information from both the ascending and descending auditory pathways. To determine how single IC neurons integrate…
Spontaneous activity is a well-known neural phenomenon that occurs throughout the brain and is essential for normal development of auditory circuits and for processing of sounds. Spontaneous activity could interfere with sound processing by reducing…
