Construction and Characterization of 3D Receptive Fields in Mouse Primary Auditory Cortex

Abstract

Neurons in the central auditory system exhibit non-linear responses to acoustic stimulation. Such nonlinearities are usually illustrated by frequency tuning curves, spectro-temporal response areas and dynamic ranges. None of these methods provide a complete representation of the neural responses in frequency, intensity and timing domains. A novel tool is developed that creates neural response representation across all three domains showing the pattern of excitation as well as inhibition. The primary auditory cortex is selected as the region to create this three dimensional representation as it is a core area of the auditory information processing. The 3D receptive field consists of three visualizations: volume rendering, surface rendering and 2D slicing. All the three visualizations enable the presentation and description of the neural responses to sound in a comprehensive fashion. The 3D receptive field will provide more detailed information when comparing one brain region with the other and can also be used to improve the efficiency of different hearing related devices such as cochlear implants.