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The Journal of Neuroscience, June 3, 2009, 29(22):7359-7363; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0793-09.2009

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Brief Communications
Stimulus-Specific Adaptation Occurs in the Auditory Thalamus

Lucy A. Anderson,¹ G. Björn Christianson,¹ and Jennifer F. Linden^1,2

¹Ear Institute, University College London, London WC1X 8EE, United Kingdom, and ²Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Jennifer F. Linden, Ear Institute, University College London, 332 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8EE, UK. Email: j.linden{at}ucl.ac.uk

Neurons in the primary auditory cortex respond less strongly to a commonly occurring "standard" tone than to the same tone when it is rare or "deviant." This phenomenon, called "stimulus-specific adaptation" (SSA), has been proposed as a possible single-neuron correlate of the mismatch negativity, a cortical evoked potential associated with stimulus novelty. Previous studies in cat did not observe SSA in single neurons in the auditory thalamus. However, these reports did not differentiate between the auditory thalamic subdivisions and did not examine the effects of changing the stimulus presentation rate. To explore the possibility of thalamic SSA more completely, we recorded extracellularly from 30 single units and 22 multiunit clusters in the ventral, medial, and dorsal subdivisions of the mouse medial geniculate body (MGB), while presenting the anesthetized animals with sequences of standard and deviant tones at interstimulus intervals of 400, 500 and 800 ms. We found SSA in the auditory thalamus at all three stimulus presentation rates, primarily in the medial subdivision but to a lesser degree also in the ventral MGB. Thalamic SSA was evident from the earliest onset of tone-evoked activity, although the latencies of responses to standard and deviant tones were not significantly different. Together with related findings of SSA in neurons of the "belt" regions of the inferior colliculus, these results demonstrate that SSA is present at subcortical levels, primarily in but not restricted to the nonlemniscal auditory pathway.

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Received Feb. 16, 2009; revised April 9, 2009; accepted May 8, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Jennifer F. Linden, Ear Institute, University College London, 332 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8EE, UK. Email: j.linden{at}ucl.ac.uk

This article has been cited by other articles:

				W. von der Behrens, P. Bauerle, M. Kossl, and B. H. Gaese Correlating Stimulus-Specific Adaptation of Cortical Neurons and Local Field Potentials in the Awake Rat J. Neurosci., November 4, 2009; 29(44): 13837 - 13849. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				F. D. Szymanski, J. A. Garcia-Lazaro, and J. W. H. Schnupp Current Source Density Profiles of Stimulus-Specific Adaptation in Rat Auditory Cortex J Neurophysiol, September 1, 2009; 102(3): 1483 - 1490. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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