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

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

The auditory system encodes time with sub-millisecond accuracy. To shed new light on the basic mechanism underlying this precise temporal neuronal coding, we analyzed the neurophonic potential, a characteristic multiunit response, in the barn owl's nucleus laminaris. We report here that the relative time measure of phase delay is robust against changes in sound level, with a precision sharper t...

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 auditory brainstem of the barn owl

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...

Spontaneous activity of auditory nerve fibers in the barn owl (Tyto alba): analyses of interspike interval distributions.

In vertebrate auditory systems, the conversion from graded receptor potentials across the hair-cell membrane into stochastic spike trains of the auditory nerve (AN) fibers is performed by ribbon synapses. The statistics underlying this process constrain auditory coding but are not precisely known. Here, we examine the distributions of interspike intervals (ISIs) from spontaneous activity of AN ...