Responses of the cerebellar auditory area to pure tone stimuli

Abstract

Simultaneous recordings from the auditory cortex and the cerebellar foliumtuber vermis of anesthetized and unanesthetized cats were obtained in response to pure-tone autitory stimuli. The auditory and cerebellar cortices both reflected frequency specificity in the awake animal. Changes in the orientation of awake animals to the sound source indicated that the cerebellar evoked potentials were highly sensitive to the directionality of the sound. Nembutal produced complete suppression of the cerebellar evoked potentials and enhancement (at higher stimulus intensities) of the auditory responses. Data indicate that the cerebellar vermis may play a major role in orienting the organism to the sound source by discriminating intensity differences between the two ears.