Serotonin modulates responses to species-specific vocalizations in the inferior colliculus

摘要: Neuromodulators such as serotonin are capable of altering the neural processing stimuli across many sensory modalities. In inferior colliculus, a major midbrain auditory gateway, alters way that individual neurons respond to simple tone bursts and linear frequency modulated sweeps. The effects complex, vary among neurons. How transforms responses spectrotemporally complex sounds type normally heard in natural settings has been poorly examined. To explore this issue further, iontophoretically applied on colliculus variety recorded species-specific vocalizations were These experiments performed Mexican free-tailed bat, species uses rich repertoire for purposes communication well echolocation. Serotonin frequently changed number calls evoking response from neurons, sometimes increasing (15% serotonin-responsive neurons), but usually decreasing (62% number. A functional consequence these serotonin-evoked changes would be change population vocalizations.