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The Journal of Neuroscience, January 3, 2007, 27(1):98-110; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2683-06.2007

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Vocal Premotor Activity in the Superior Colliculus

Shiva R. Sinha^1,3 and Cynthia F. Moss^1,2,3

¹Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, ²Institute for Systems Research, ³Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742

Correspondence should be addressed to Shiva Sinha at his present address: Department of Physics, Swain Hall West, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. Email: srsinha{at}indiana.edu

Chronic neural recordings were taken from the midbrain superior colliculus (SC) of echolocating bats while they were engaged in one of two distinct behavioral tasks: virtual target amplitude discrimination (VTAD) and real oscillating target tracking (ROTT). In the VTAD task, bats used a limited range of sonar call features to discriminate the amplitude category of echoes, whereas in the ROTT task, the bat produced dynamically modulated sonar calls to track a moving target. Newly developed methods for chronic recordings in unrestrained, behaving bats reveal two consistent bouts of SC neural activity preceding the onset of sonar vocalizations in both tasks. A short lead bout occurs tightly coupled to vocal onset (VTAD, –5.1 to –2.2 ms range, –3.6 ± 0.7 ms mean lead time; ROTT, –3.0 to + 0.4 ms range, –1.2 ± 1.3 ms mean lead time), and this activity may play a role in marking the time of each sonar emission. A long lead bout in SC activity occurs earlier and spreads over a longer interval (VTAD, –40.6 to –8.4 ms range, –22.2 ± 3.9 ms mean lead time; ROTT, –29.8 to –7.1 ms range, –17.5 ± 9.1 ms mean lead time) when compared with short lead events. In the goal-directed ROTT task, the timing of long lead event times vary with the bat's sonar call duration. This finding, along with behavioral studies demonstrating that bats adjust sonar call duration as they track targets at changing distance, suggests the bat SC contributes to range-dependent adjustments of sonar call duration.

Key words: colliculus; premotor; extracellular recording; vocalization; spatial orientation; sensorimotor; neuroethology

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Received June 25, 2006; revised Oct. 26, 2006; accepted Nov. 17, 2006.

Correspondence should be addressed to Shiva Sinha at his present address: Department of Physics, Swain Hall West, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. Email: srsinha{at}indiana.edu

This article has been cited by other articles:

				N. Ulanovsky and C. F. Moss What the bat's voice tells the bat's brain PNAS, June 24, 2008; 105(25): 8491 - 8498. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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