Microsecond precision of phase delay in the auditory system of the barn owl.

Microsecond precision of phase delay in the auditory system of the barn owl Short title: Microsecond precision of phase delay

14 Hebbian Learning of Pulse Timing in the Barn Owl Auditory System

Hebbian learning refers to an unsupervised correlation-based adaptation mechanism and is usually formulated in terms of mean firing rates. In this Chapter we study learning at the spike level. The learning process is driven by the temporal correlations between presynaptic spike arrival and postsynaptic firing. To explore the effect of learning on pulse coding, we consider the example of auditor...

Temporal coding in the sub-millisecond range: Model of barn owl auditory pathway

Binaural coincidence detection is essential for the localization of external sounds and requires auditory signal processing with high temporal precision. We present an integrate-and-fire model of spike processing in the auditory pathway of the barn owl. It is shown that a temporal precision in the microsecond range can be achieved with neuronal time constants which are at least one magnitude lo...

Phase locking to high frequencies in the auditory nerve and cochlear nucleus magnocellularis of the barn owl, Tyto alba.

The auditory system of the barn owl is an important model for temporal processing on a very fast time scale and for the neural mechanisms and circuitry underlying sound localization. Phase locking has been shown to be the behaviorally relevant temporal code. This study examined the quality and intensity dependence of phase locking in single auditory nerve fibers of the barn owl to define the in...

In-flight corrections in free-flying barn owls (Tyto alba) during sound localization tasks.

Barn owls localize a stationary auditory target with high accuracy. They might also be able to hit a target that is intermittently moving while the owl is approaching. If so, there should be a critical delay before strike initiation, up to which the owl can adapt its flight path to a new stimulus position. In this study, this critical stimulus delay was determined in a three-dimensional free-fl...