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Dorsal Cochlear Nucleus of the Rat: Representation of Complex Sounds in Ears Damaged by Acoustic Trauma

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Abstract

Acoustic trauma damages the cochlea but secondarily modifies circuits of the central auditory system. Changes include decreases in inhibitory neurotransmitter systems, degeneration and rewiring of synaptic circuits, and changes in neural activity. Little is known about the consequences of these changes for the representation of complex sounds. Here, we show data from the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) of rats with a moderate high-frequency hearing loss following acoustic trauma. Single-neuron recording was used to estimate the organization of neurons’ receptive fields, the balance of inhibition and excitation, and the representation of the spectra of complex broadband stimuli. The complex stimuli had random spectral shapes (RSSs), and the responses were fit with a model that allows the quality of the representation and its degree of linearity to be estimated. Tone response maps of DCN neurons in rat are like those in other species investigated previously, suggesting the same general organization of this nucleus. Following acoustic trauma, abnormal response types appeared. These can be interpreted as reflecting degraded tuning in auditory nerve fibers plus loss of inhibitory inputs in DCN. Abnormal types are somewhat more prevalent at later times (103–376 days) following the exposure, but not significantly so. Inhibition became weaker in post-trauma neurons that retained inhibitory responses but also disappeared in many neurons. The quality of the representation of spectral shape, measured by sensitivity to the spectral shapes of RSS stimuli, was decreased following trauma; in fact, neurons with abnormal response types responded mainly to overall stimulus level, and not spectral shape.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Troy Rubin for help with recording procedures, Qian Gao for programming and other assistance with computing, Ron Atkinson for electronics support, Kerrie Tiedemann for assistance with animals, and Phyllis Taylor for technical assistance. The work was supported by grants from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders RC1-DC010594, R01-DC000115, and P30-DC005211.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Center for Hearing and Balance, Johns Hopkins University, 505 Traylor Bldg., 720 Rutland Ave., Baltimore, MD, 21205, USA

    Yang Li, Tessa-Jonne F. Ropp & Eric D. Young

  2. Department of Otolaryngology-HNS, Center for Hearing and Balance, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 21205, USA

    Bradford J. May

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  1. Yang Li
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  2. Tessa-Jonne F. Ropp
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  3. Bradford J. May
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  4. Eric D. Young
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Correspondence to Eric D. Young.

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Li, Y., Ropp, TJ.F., May, B.J. et al. Dorsal Cochlear Nucleus of the Rat: Representation of Complex Sounds in Ears Damaged by Acoustic Trauma. JARO 16, 487–505 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10162-015-0522-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10162-015-0522-z

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