Contributions of Distinct Auditory Cortical Inhibitory Neuron Types to the Detection of Sounds in Background Noise

• DOI: 10.1523/eneuro.0264-21.2021
• Publication Date: 2022-02-15T18:51:15Z
• Authors: Anna A. Lakunina; Nadav Menashe; Santiago Jaramillo
• Keywords: Auditory System; Natural sounds; Auditory perception

The ability to separate background noise from relevant acoustic signals is essential for appropriate sound-driven behavior in natural environments. Examples of this separation are apparent the auditory system, where neural responses behaviorally stimuli become increasingly invariant along ascending pathway. However, mechanisms that underlie reduction not well understood. To address gap knowledge, we first evaluated effects cortical inactivation on mice both sexes trained perform a simple signal-in-noise detection task and found outputs cortex important noisy Next, contributions two most common inhibitory cell types, parvalbumin-expressing (PV+) somatostatin-expressing (SOM+) interneurons, perception masked stimuli. We either PV+ or SOM+ cells resulted determine presence by noise. These results indicate disruption network dynamics these types sufficient impair