Abstract
Vocal Communication plays a crucial role in survival and reproductive success in most amphibian species. Although amphibian communication sounds are often complex consisting of many temporal features, we know little about the biological significance of each temporal component. The present study examined the biological significance of notes of the male advertisement calls of the Emei music frog (Babina daunchina) using the optimized electroencephalogram (EEG) paradigm of mismatch negativity (MMN). Music frog calls generally contain four to six notes separated approximately by 150 millisecond intervals. A standard stimulus (white noise) and five deviant stimuli (five notes from one advertisement call) were played back to each subject while simultaneously recording multi-channel EEG signals. The results showed that the MMN amplitude for the first call note was significantly larger than for that of the others. Moreover, the MMN amplitudes evoked from the left forebrain and midbrain were typically larger than those from the right counterpart. These results are consistent with the ideas that the first call note conveys more information than the others for auditory recognition and that there is left-hemisphere dominance for processing information derived from conspecific calls in frogs.
Highlights
Acoustic signaling is critically important for both survival and reproductive success in vocalizing animals
Previous research in Babina has shown that male calls produced from inside burrows yield significantly different electroencephalogram (EEG) or event-related potential (ERP) patterns compared to those produced outside burrows[21,22,23]
For mismatch negativity (MMN) amplitudes, TL2 was significantly larger than TL1 and TR1, while TL3 was significantly larger than TR1 (p < 0.05, Fig. 3)
Summary
Acoustic signaling is critically important for both survival and reproductive success in vocalizing animals. The time-frequency properties of animal vocalizations[7,8,9,10,11] as well as the structure of vocalizations (notes, elements or syllables)[12,13,14] usually differ significantly across individuals consistent with the idea that these signals are important cues for species discrimination and individual recognition Taken together these findings imply that each component of such complex animal vocalizations may have distinct functions and biological significance. It is reasonable to ask if auditory processing differs between successive call notes as would be reflected by different ERP MMN amplitudes In addition to these considerations, behavioral and EEG studies indicate that music frogs manifest right-ear/left-mesencephalon advantage in processing species-specific vocalizations[21, 24, 25], suggesting that MMN amplitude distributions would be lateralized
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