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Next Article 
Journal of Neuroscience, Vol 6, 3413-3422, Copyright © 1986 by Society for Neuroscience
Selectivity for interaural time difference in the owl's midbrain
T Takahashi and M Konishi
The barn owl uses the interaural difference in the timing of sounds to
determine the azimuth of the source. When the sound has a wide frequency
band, localization is precise. When localizing tones, however, the barn owl
errs in a manner that suggests that it is confused by phantom targets. We
report a neural equivalent of these phenomena as they are observed in the
space-specific neuron of the owl's inferior colliculus. When stimulated
with a tone, the space- specific neuron discharges maximally at interaural
time differences (ITDs) that differ by one period of the stimulus tone.
Changing the stimulus frequency changes the period of the ITD-response
functions, but 1 ITD evokes, in most neurons, a maximal response,
regardless of frequency. This ITD is the characteristic delay (CD). When
stimulated with noise, there is a maximal response only to ITDs at or near
the CD. Thus, the space-specific neuron can unambiguously signal the CD,
provided that the signal contains more than 1 frequency. The preferential
response to a single ITD, which is observed with noise stimuli, was also
observed when the summed waveform of the best frequency and another tone,
F2, was presented. The response of the space-specific neuron to these
2-tone stimuli could not be accounted for by the summing or averaging of
the ITD-response functions obtained with the best frequency or F2 alone,
suggesting that nonlinear neural processes are involved.
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