It’s all a matter of timing: Temporal mechanisms for production and encoding of acoustic signals

Abstract

Studies of acoustic communication in teleost fish have identified basic principles underlying both the motor control of acoustic signaling and the sensory encoding of the physical attributes of those signals. Parental male midshipman fish excavate denlike nests under rocky shelters in the intertidal and subtidal zones along the western coast of the United States and Canada. Nesting males generate long duration, multi-harmonic signals with a sinusoidallike appearance that are known as ‘‘hums.’’ Observations of courtship behavior together with phonotaxis experiments support the hypothesis that the hum functions as a mate call. Early studies showed that a rhythmically active, pacemaker-motoneuron circuit in the hindbrain establishes the temporal features of hums [Bass and Baker, J. Neurobiol. 21, 1155 (1990)]. Recent studies suggest that temporal coding in the auditory midbrain contributes to the segregation of, and discrimination between, concurrent acoustic signals which form acoustic beats like those generated by the overlapping hums of nesting male midshipman during the breeding season [Bodnar and Bass, J. Neurosci. 17, 7553 (1997)]. Hence, the rhythmic timing of action potentials is important for both acoustic signaling and reception. [Work supported by NIH and NSF.]