Influence of Inhibitory Inputs on Rate and Timing of Responses in the Anteroventral Cochlear Nucleus

1 Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering, 2 Institute for Sensory Research, and 3 Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York Submitted 26 January 2007; accepted in final form 15 January 2008 Anatomical and physiological studies have shown that anteroventral cochlear nucleus (AVCN) neurons receive glycinergic and GABAergic inhibitory inputs. In this study, changes in the temporal responses of AVCN neurons to pure tones and complex sounds after blocking inhibition were analyzed. Blocking inhibition influenced the temporal responses of each type of AVCN neuron. Choppers showed more chopping peaks and shortened chopping cycles after blocking inhibition. Sustained and slowly adapting choppers showed increased regularity throughout the response duration after blocking inhibition, whereas most transient choppers showed increased regularity in the early part of the response. Diverse changes in temporal response patterns were observed in neurons with primary-like and unusual responses, with several neurons showing a large decrease in the first-spike latency after blocking inhibition. This result disagreed with previous findings that onset responses are less affected than sustained responses by manipulating inhibition. Although blocking inhibition had a greater effect on spontaneous activity than that on tone-evoked activity, the change in spontaneous activity was less significant because of larger variability. In addition, for relatively high level masker noises, blocking inhibition had similar effects on responses to noise-alone and noise-plus-tone stimuli, in contrast with previous studies with low-level background noise. In general, inhibition had an enhancing effect on temporal contrast only for responses to amplitude-modulated tones, for which envelope synchrony was enhanced. Results of this study contribute new information about the characteristics, functional roles, and possible sources of inhibitory inputs received by AVCN neurons. Address for reprint requests and other correspondence: L. H. Carney, Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Rochester, Box 603, 601 Elmwood Ave., Rochester, NY 14642 (E-mail: laurel.carney{at}rochester.edu )