Platinum-containing drugs, such as cisplatin and carboplatin, are known to have ototoxic side effects causing hearing loss that may be accompanied by tinnitus. This study reviews recent studies on the ototoxicity of cisplatin and carboplatin and summarizes the effects of protective agents that may prevent hearing loss and tinnitus. The primary locus of ototoxicity is in the cochlea, but oxidati...

A horseradish peroxidase conjugated lectin from Glycine max (soy bean agglutinin; SBA) was used to characterise the distribution of N-acetylgalactosamine in the cochlear nucleus of the mongolian gerbil. SBA bound differentially to a variety of structures within the cochlear nucleus. Specific SBA labelling was associated with large non-granule neurones of variable size and shape throughout the c...

Using guinea-pig isolated whole brain preparation in vitro, synaptic responses to electrical stimulation of auditory nerves were examined in intracellularly recorded and stained neurons of posteroventral and dorsal divisions of the cochlear nucleus. Stimulation of the contralateral auditory nerve evoked exclusively IPSPs in 70% of neurons, with amplitude of 2.3+/-1.2mV. Neurons of all major cel...

Many neuronal systems represent information by the timing of individual spikes, and it is generally assumed that spike timing predominantly encodes excitatory inputs. We show here that the timing of inhibition can also be explicitly encoded in spike times using time-dependent and voltage-dependent properties of a rapidly inactivating potassium channel (I(KIF)). In vitro recordings in rat dorsal...

The integration of information across sensory modalities enables sound to be processed in the context of position, movement, and object identity. Inputs to the granule cell domain (GCD) of the cochlear nucleus have been shown to arise from somatosensory brain stem structures, but the nature of the projection from the spinal trigeminal nucleus is unknown. In the present study, we labeled spinal ...

Groups of pregnant rats were injected with two successive daily doses of 3H-thymidine from gestational days 12 and 13 (E12 + 13) until the day before parturition (E21 + 22). In adult progeny of the injected rats the proportion of neurons generated on specific embryonic days was determined quantitatively in the vestibular and auditory nuclei of the upper medulla. In the vestibular nuclei, neuron...

Tinnitus, the perception of phantom sound, is often a debilitating condition that affects many millions of people. Little is known, however, about the molecules that participate in the induction of tinnitus. In brain slices containing the dorsal cochlear nucleus, we reveal a tinnitus-specific increase in the spontaneous firing rate of principal neurons (hyperactivity). This hyperactivity is obs...

It has been suggested that the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) is involved in the temporal representation of both envelope periodicity and pitch. This hypothesis is tested using iterated rippled noise (IRN), which is generated by a cascade of delay and add [IRN(+)] or delay and subtract [IRN(-)] operations. The autocorrelation functions (ACFs) of the waveform and the envelope of IRN(+) have a fir...