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The Cricket Auditory Pathway: Neural Processing of Acoustic Signals

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The Cricket as a Model Organism

Abstract

The auditory afferents of crickets project from the hearing organs in the front legs toward the auditory neuropil in the prothoracic ganglion. They respond best to either the carrier frequency of the communication signals or to ultrasound, such as occurs in bat echolocation calls. Local interneurons (ON1) and two ascending interneurons (AN1 and AN2) establish the first stage of auditory processing. The recurrent inhibitory connections of ON1 support bilateral auditory contrast enhancement. The ascending neurons forward either spike patterns related to the calling song (AN1) or to ultrasound (AN2) to the brain. The temporal integration by the interneurons (ON1, AN1) of sensory activity in response to cricket-like sound patterns leads to an optimum information transfer at the pulse repetition rate of the song patterns. The temporal structure of song patterns may be further processed in a delay-coincidence-detection circuit of local neurons in the brain, which show selective responses to the pulse rate of the male calling song. Spike bursts in ON1 and AN2 seem to be a salient response in the processing of ultrasound. They can even trigger avoidance steering motor activity whereas the neural link between pattern recognition and phonotaxis is not yet characterized.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Gerald S. Pollack

  2. Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3EJ, UK

    Berthold Hedwig

Authors
  1. Gerald S. Pollack
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  2. Berthold Hedwig
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gerald S. Pollack .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Biology and Neuroscience, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, USA

    Hadley Wilson Horch

  2. Graduate school of Bioscience and Bioindustry, Tokushima University, Tokushima, Japan

    Taro Mito

  3. Biological Sciences Department, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA

    Aleksandar Popadić

  4. Department of Cytology and Histology, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan

    Hideyo Ohuchi

  5. Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine, Okayama, Japan

    Sumihare Noji

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Pollack, G.S., Hedwig, B. (2017). The Cricket Auditory Pathway: Neural Processing of Acoustic Signals. In: Horch, H., Mito, T., Popadić, A., Ohuchi, H., Noji, S. (eds) The Cricket as a Model Organism. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-56478-2_11

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