Strong energy component is more important than spectral selectivity in modeling responses of midbrain auditory neurons to wide-band environmental sounds

Tsai Rong Chang, Petr Marsalek, Tzai Wen Chiu*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Modeling central auditory neurons in response to complex sounds not only helps understanding neural processing of speech signals but can also provide insights for biomimetics in neuro-engineering. While modeling responses of midbrain auditory neurons to synthetic tones is rather good, modeling those to environmental sounds is less satisfactory. Environmental sounds typically contain a wide range of frequency components, often with strong and transient energy. These stimulus features have not been examined in the conventional approach of auditory modeling centered on spectral selectivity. To this end, we firstly compared responses to an environmental sound of auditory midbrain neurons across 3 subpopulations of neurons with frequency selectivity in the low, middle and high ranges; secondly, we manipulated the sound energy, both in power and in spectrum, and compared across these subpopulations how their modeled responses were affected. The environmental sound was recorded when a rat was drinking from a feeding bottle (called the ‘drinking sound’). The sound spectrum was divided into 20 non-overlapping frequency bands (from 0 to 20 kHz, at 1 kHz width) and presented to an artificial neural model built on a committee machine with parallel spectral inputs to simulate the known tonotopic organization of the auditory system. The model was trained to predict empirical response probability profiles of neurons to the repeated sounds. Results showed that model performance depended more on the strong energy components than on the spectral selectivity. Findings were interpreted to reflect general sensitivity to rapidly changing sound intensities at the auditory midbrain and in the cortex.

Original languageEnglish
Article number104752
JournalBioSystems
Volume221
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2022

Keywords

  • Artificial neural network
  • Committee machine
  • Environmental complex sound
  • Intensity transient
  • PSTH
  • Rat

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Strong energy component is more important than spectral selectivity in modeling responses of midbrain auditory neurons to wide-band environmental sounds'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this