Mapping of the auditory area in the cerebellar vermis and hemispheres of the little brown bats, Myotis lucifugus

Abstract

Mapping of auditory area in the cerebellar vermis and hemispheres of little brown bats, Myotis lucifugus, shows that a large area of the bat's cerebellum contains units responding to acoustic stimuli. These units had latencies between 4 and 34 msec and best frequencies between 33.0 and 92.5 kHz. The Q 10-dB values of their tuning curves ranged from 2.0 to 19.7. Most of the units studied fired only a few impulses during a stimulus with minimum thresholds between 22 and 90 dB SPL. Units in the cerebellar vermis tend to have higher best frequencies and shorter latencies than those in the cerebellar hemispheres. However, there is no evidence of clear tonotopic organization therein.