The role of inhibition in a computational model of an auditory cortical neuron during the encoding of temporal information.
In auditory cortex, temporal information within a sound is represented by two complementary neural codes: a temporal representation based on stimulus-locked firing and a rate representation, where discharge rate co-varies with the timing between acoustic events but lacks a stimulus-synchronized resp...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2015-04-01
|
| Series: | PLoS Computational Biology |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004197 |
| Summary: | In auditory cortex, temporal information within a sound is represented by two complementary neural codes: a temporal representation based on stimulus-locked firing and a rate representation, where discharge rate co-varies with the timing between acoustic events but lacks a stimulus-synchronized response. Using a computational neuronal model, we find that stimulus-locked responses are generated when sound-evoked excitation is combined with strong, delayed inhibition. In contrast to this, a non-synchronized rate representation is generated when the net excitation evoked by the sound is weak, which occurs when excitation is coincident and balanced with inhibition. Using single-unit recordings from awake marmosets (Callithrix jacchus), we validate several model predictions, including differences in the temporal fidelity, discharge rates and temporal dynamics of stimulus-evoked responses between neurons with rate and temporal representations. Together these data suggest that feedforward inhibition provides a parsimonious explanation of the neural coding dichotomy observed in auditory cortex. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1553-734X 1553-7358 |