Single auditory neurons rapidly discriminate conspecific communication signals
Christian K. Machens & Andreas V. M. Herz
Nature Neuroscience 6, 341 - 342 (2003)
Abstract
Animals that rely on acoustic communication to find mates, such as
grasshoppers, are astonishingly accurate in recognizing song
patterns that are specific to their own species. This raises
the question of whether they can also solve a far more complicated
task that might provide a basis for mate preference and sexual
selection: to distinguish individual songs by detecting slight
variations around the common species-specific theme. Using
spike-train discriminability to quantify the precision of neural
responses from the auditory periphery of a model grasshopper
species, we show that information sufficient to distinguish songs
is readily available at the single-cell level when the spike
trains are analyzed on a millisecond time scale.
Last modified: Fri Nov 28 11:23:18 CET 2008