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The Journal of Neuroscience, April 9, 2008, 28(15):3897-3910; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5366-07.2008

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Spectrotemporal Processing Differences between Auditory Cortical Fast-Spiking and Regular-Spiking Neurons

Craig A. Atencio and Christoph E. Schreiner

Bioengineering Graduate Group, University of California, San Francisco/University of California, Berkeley, W. M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neuroscience, and Coleman Memorial Laboratory, Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143

Correspondence should be addressed to Craig A. Atencio, 513 Parnassus Avenue, HSE 834, Box 0732, San Francisco, CA 94143-0732. Email: craig{at}phy.ucsf.edu

Excitatory pyramidal neurons and inhibitory interneurons constitute the main elements of cortical circuitry and have distinctive morphologic and electrophysiological properties. Here, we differentiate them by analyzing the time course of their action potentials (APs) and characterizing their receptive field properties in auditory cortex. Pyramidal neurons have longer APs and discharge as regular-spiking units (RSUs), whereas basket and chandelier cells, which are inhibitory interneurons, have shorter APs and are fast-spiking units (FSUs). To compare these neuronal classes, we stimulated cat primary auditory cortex neurons with a dynamic moving ripple stimulus and constructed single-unit spectrotemporal receptive fields (STRFs) and their associated nonlinearities. FSUs had shorter latencies, broader spectral tuning, greater stimulus specificity, and higher temporal precision than RSUs. The STRF structure of FSUs was more separable, suggesting more independence between spectral and temporal processing regimens. The nonlinearities associated with the two cell classes were indicative of higher feature selectivity for FSUs. These global functional differences between RSUs and FSUs suggest fundamental distinctions between putative excitatory and inhibitory interneurons that shape auditory cortical processing.

Key words: fast-spiking; regular-spiking; spectrotemporal; auditory cortex; interneuron; receptive field

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Received Dec. 4, 2007; revised Jan. 28, 2008; accepted Feb. 23, 2008.

Correspondence should be addressed to Craig A. Atencio, 513 Parnassus Avenue, HSE 834, Box 0732, San Francisco, CA 94143-0732. Email: craig{at}phy.ucsf.edu

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. de la Rocha, C. Marchetti, M. Schiff, and A. D. Reyes Linking the Response Properties of Cells in Auditory Cortex with Network Architecture: Cotuning versus Lateral Inhibition J. Neurosci., September 10, 2008; 28(37): 9151 - 9163. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				I. Diester and A. Nieder Complementary Contributions of Prefrontal Neuron Classes in Abstract Numerical Categorization J. Neurosci., July 30, 2008; 28(31): 7737 - 7747. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				C. M. Niell and M. P. Stryker Highly Selective Receptive Fields in Mouse Visual Cortex J. Neurosci., July 23, 2008; 28(30): 7520 - 7536. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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