Robustness of cortical and subcortical processing in the presence of natural masking sounds

• Published in: Scientific reports 2018-05, Vol.8 (1), p.6863-12, Article 6863
• Main Authors: Beetz, M. Jerome, García-Rosales, Francisco, Kössl, Manfred, Hechavarría, Julio C.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 631/378/2619/1639; 631/378/2619/2618; 631/601/18; 9/10; Acoustic Stimulation - methods; Adaptation; Adaptation, Psychological; Animal behavior; Animals; Bats; Cerebral Cortex - physiology; Cerebrum - physiology; Chiroptera - physiology; Conspecifics; Echolocation; Echolocation - physiology; Female; Humanities and Social Sciences; Information processing; Male; Mesencephalon; multidisciplinary; Neuroethology; Neurons - physiology; Noise; Playback; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Somatosensory cortex; Vocalization, Animal - physiology
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-25241-x

Processing of ethologically relevant stimuli could be interfered by non-relevant stimuli. Animals have behavioral adaptations to reduce signal interference. It is largely unexplored whether the behavioral adaptations facilitate neuronal processing of relevant stimuli. Here, we characterize behavioral adaptations in the presence of biotic noise in the echolocating bat Carollia perspicillata and we show that the behavioral adaptations could facilitate neuronal processing of biosonar information. According to the echolocation behavior, bats need to extract their own signals in the presence of vocalizations from conspecifics. With playback experiments, we demonstrate that C. perspicillata increases the sensory acquisition rate by emitting groups of echolocation calls when flying in noisy environments. Our neurophysiological results from the auditory midbrain and cortex show that the high sensory acquisition rate does not vastly increase neuronal suppression and that the response to an echolocation sequence is partially preserved in the presence of biosonar signals from conspecifics.