Abstract
The auditory system of echolocating bats is adapted for processing species-specific ultrasonic signals. While FM (frequency modulation) bats are strictly sensitive to the frequency ranges of their orientation signals or prey-generated noise, CF-FM (constant frequency-FM) bats have a disproportionate number of neurons tuned to frequencies near the CF component of their orientation sounds, and most of them are on–off responders. Furthermore, the inferior collicular neurons of the CF-FM bats discharged as single-on or double-on responders to CF-FM stimuli. To further study the differences in auditory signal processing of these two types of bats, as the first step we conducted an evoked potential response study in the inferior colliculus of the CF-FM bat, Hipposideros pratti and the FM bat, Pipistrellus abramus using CF, FM and CF-FM stimuli. The results showed that the CF sounds always evoked collicular on- and off-responses in CF-FM bats, but the FM bats only had on-responses to both CF and FM sounds, indicting species-specific neural circuits. However, when stimulated with CF-FM sounds, collicular responses were evoked by both the CF and FM components from both FM and CF-FM bats, suggesting they have some generic neural circuit.
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Abbreviations
- BF:
-
Best frequency
- CF:
-
Constant frequency
- CM:
-
Cochlear microphonic
- DO:
-
Double-on
- FFT:
-
Fast Fourier transformation
- FM:
-
Frequency modulation
- H :
-
Harmonic
- IC:
-
Inferior colliculus
- N1:
-
Primary auditory neurons
- NLL:
-
Nuclei of lateral
- R CFoff :
-
Off-responses evoked by the CF sound
- R CFon :
-
On-responses evoked by the CF sound
- R FM :
-
The responses evoked by the FM sound
- R H :
-
The responses evoked by the CF-FM harmonic
- R S :
-
Summated response
- SO:
-
Single-on
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Acknowledgements
The experiments were conducted with the approval of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, PRC. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We also thank Zhongdan Cui for critically reading the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (#31200832 to ZF, 31571232 to QC and 31772454 to JT).
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QC, PJ and ZF conceived and supervised the project; PJ, ZF and QC wrote the manuscript with drafts and input from the other authors; NX, ZF, GZ, DZ, LL, and JT performed the experiments and analyzed the data; ZF and QC designed the experiments.
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Fu, Z., Xu, N., Zhang, G. et al. Evoked potential study of the inferior collicular response to constant frequency-frequency modulation (CF-FM) sounds in FM and CF-FM bats. J Comp Physiol A 205, 239–252 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-019-01326-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-019-01326-4