Abstract
Both primary auditory cortex (A1) and anterior auditory field (AAF) are core regions of auditory cortex of many mammalians. While the function of A1 has been well documented, the role of AAF in sound related behavioral remain largely unclear. Here in adult rats, sound cued fear conditioning paradigm, surgical ablation, and chemogenetic manipulations were used to examine the role of AAF in fear related sound context recognition. Precise surgical ablation of AAF cannot block sound cued freezing behavior but the fear conditioning became non-selective to acoustic cue. Reversible inhibition of AAF using chemogenetic activation at either training or testing phase can both lead to strong yet non-selective sound cued freezing behavior. These simple yet clear results suggested that in sound cued fear conditioning, sound cue and detailed content in the cue (e.g., frequency) are processed through distinct neural circuits and AAF is a critical part in the cortex dependent pathway. In addition, AAF is needed and playing a gating role for precise recognition of sound content in fear conditioning task through inhibiting fear to harmless cues.
Highlights
IntroductionPrevious studies suggested that auditory cortex can be divided into different subregions according to anatomical connections (e.g., thalamocortical projection) and functional differences (e.g., tonotopic map) (Rutkowski et al, 2003)
Previous studies suggested that auditory cortex can be divided into different subregions according to anatomical connections and functional differences (Rutkowski et al, 2003)
Anatomical evidences revealed that thalamocortical projections to AI and anterior auditory field (AAF) could be originated from different divisions of medial geniculate body (MGB) (Andersen et al, 1980; Morel and Imig, 1987; Lee, 2004)
Summary
Previous studies suggested that auditory cortex can be divided into different subregions according to anatomical connections (e.g., thalamocortical projection) and functional differences (e.g., tonotopic map) (Rutkowski et al, 2003). The rat auditory cortex can be divided into at least four regions: the primary auditory cortex (A1), the anterior auditory field (AAF), the posterior auditory field (PAF), and the ventral auditory field (VAF, known as secondary auditory cortex or A2 in some literature) (Doron et al, 2002; Shiramatsu et al, 2016; Tao et al, 2017) Among these subregions, A1 and AAF in rat are largest in size [A1 = 1.35 ± 0.16 mm; AAF = 1.21 ± 0.13 mm according to Polley et al (2007)] suggest both A1 and AAF are essential for auditory perception. Compared with the extensive research conducted on A1, our current understanding about the role of AAF in auditory perception is much less clear
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