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What the Toadfish Ear Tells the Toadfish Brain About Sound

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Fish Hearing and Bioacoustics

Part of the book series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology ((AEMB,volume 877))

Abstract

Of the three, paired otolithic endorgans in the ear of teleost fishes, the saccule is the one most often demonstrated to have a major role in encoding frequencies of biologically relevant sounds. The toadfish saccule also encodes sound level and sound source direction in the phase-locked activity conveyed via auditory afferents to nuclei of the ipsilateral octaval column in the medulla. Although paired auditory receptors are present in teleost fishes, binaural processes were believed to be unimportant due to the speed of sound in water and the acoustic transparency of the tissues in water. In contrast, there are behavioral and anatomical data that support binaural processing in fishes. Studies in the toadfish combined anatomical tract-tracing and physiological recordings from identified sites along the ascending auditory pathway to document response characteristics at each level. Binaural computations in the medulla and midbrain sharpen the directional information provided by the saccule. Furthermore, physiological studies in the central nervous system indicated that encoding frequency, sound level, temporal pattern, and sound source direction are important components of what the toadfish ear tells the toadfish brain about sound.

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Acknowledgements

Arthur Popper gave a great gift to his graduate students—freedom to pursue what interested them about fish hearing. If components of the research were out of his area of expertise, he introduced the student to someone who could provide training and advice. Therefore, I thank him for his guidance and for introducing me to Catherine McCormick and Catherine Carr, both of whom provided critical instruction and feedback for the anatomical studies on O. tau completed in Arthur’s lab. In addition, Arthur encouraged students to present their research and initiate interactions that might (and did) lead to post-doctoral collaborations, in my case, with Steve Highstein and Richard Fay. I gratefully acknowledge the instruction and guidance that Steve Highstein provided at the MBL, in particular, on surgical techniques and intracellular label injection using “Alfred.”All of the physiological work described here was conducted with Richard Fay, a close collaborator in every sense of the word. He was never one to direct research from afar—he was in the lab for nearly every experiment, “sweating the small stuff,” as only the best scientists do. About 10 years ago, Dick Fay said “We know far less than we think we do about hearing in fish.” No doubt there is much to learn. As many will state in this volume, his ideas and hypotheses have driven a diverse array of projects and stimulated many spirited discussions. There will be no end to his influence on research into the sense of hearing in fishes.

The work on the auditory pathway and hearing in toadfish was funded by an NIMH NRSA predoctoral fellowship to PL Edds-Walton; NIH NIDCD Program Project grants to SM Highstein and RR Fay, on which PL Edds-Walton was a post-doctoral scientist; and NIH NIDCD grants to RR Fay, on which PL Edds-Walton was a Research Associate or Co-principal Investigator. Lastly, I am grateful for the support of my husband and son over the past 20 years, for participating in my annual migrations to the MBL, cheering me up on difficult days, and understanding that some days the toadfish had to come first.

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  1. Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, 02543, USA

    Peggy L. Edds-Walton

  2. Science Education and Enrichment, 6864 Rycroft Drive, Riverside, CA, 9250, USA

    Peggy L. Edds-Walton

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  1. Peggy L. Edds-Walton
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Correspondence to Peggy L. Edds-Walton .

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Joseph A. Sisneros

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Edds-Walton, P.L. (2016). What the Toadfish Ear Tells the Toadfish Brain About Sound. In: Sisneros, J. (eds) Fish Hearing and Bioacoustics. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 877. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21059-9_10

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