Golding lab publishes 2 papers in Neuron

 

Dr. Nace Golding and his postdoctoral fellow Dr. Michael Roberts published two papers in the journal Neuron entitled: (1) “Directional hearing by linear summations of binaural inputs at the medial superior olive”, and (2) “A mechanistic understanding of the role of feedforward inhibition in the mammalian sound localization circuitry”. Humans and other mammals localize sounds by comparing the timing of excitation of neural inputs driven by the two ears, a process termed “binaural coincidence detection.” Recent models have postulated that inhibitory inputs shape this process by altering the timing and shape of excitation. However, the work published in these two papers has now shown that coincidence detection is dominated by the timing of excitatory inputs. Further, this work reveals that inhibition serves to sharpen the code for sound location without rendering it sensitive to the specific nature of the sound, such as its frequency and intensity.