Spectrally specific temporal analyses of spike-train responses to complex sounds: A unifying framework

by Satyabrata Parida, Hari Bharadwaj, Michael G. Heinz Significant scientific and translational questions remain in auditory neuroscience surrounding the neural correlates of perception. Relating perceptual and neural data collected from humans can be useful; however, human-based neural data are typically limited to evoked far-field responses, which l ack anatomical and physiological specificity. Laboratory-controlled preclinical animal models offer the advantage of comparing single-unit and evoked responses from the same animals. This ability provides opportunities to develop invaluable insight into proper interpretations of evoked responses, wh ich benefits both basic-science studies of neural mechanisms and translational applications, e.g., diagnostic development. However, these comparisons have been limited by a disconnect between the types of spectrotemporal analyses used with single-unit spike trains and evoked responses, which results because these response types are fundamentally different (point-process versus continuous-valued signals) even though the responses themselves are related. Here, we describe a unifying framework to study temporal coding of complex sounds that allows spike-train and evoked-response data to be analyz ed and compared using the same advanced signal-processing techniques. The framework uses a set of peristimulus-time histograms computed from single-unit spike trains in response to polarity-alternating stimuli to allow advanced spectral analys...
Source: PLoS Computational Biology - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: research