Functional Mapping of the Auditory Midbrain during Mate Call Reception

We examined patterns of neural activity as assayed by changes in gene expression to localize representation of acoustic mating signals in the auditory midbrain of frogs. We exposed wild-caught male Physalaemus pustulosus to conspecific mating calls that vary in their behavioral salience, nonsalient mating calls, or no sound. We measured expression of the immediate early gene egr-1 (also called ZENK, zif268, NGFI-A, and krox-24) throughout the torus semicircularis, the auditory midbrain homolog of the inferior colliculus. Differential egr-1 induction in response to the acoustic stimuli occurred in the laminar, midline, and principal nuclei of the torus semicircularis, whereas the ventral region did not show significant effects of stimulus. The laminar nucleus differentially responded to conspecific mating calls compared with nonsalient mating calls, whereas the midline and principal nuclei responded preferentially to one of two conspecific calls. These responses were not explained by simple acoustic properties of the stimuli, and they demonstrate a functional heterogeneity of auditory processing of complex biological signals within the frog midbrain. Moreover, using analyses that assess the ability of the torus semicircularis as a whole to discriminate among acoustic stimuli, we found that activity patterns in the four regions together provide more information about biologically relevant acoustic stimuli than activity in any single region.