Corticofugal Modulation of the Paradoxical Latency Shifts of Inferior Collicular Neurons

The central auditory system creates various types of neurons tuned to different acoustic parameters other than a specific frequency. The response latency of auditory neurons typically shortens with an increase in stimulus intensity. However, approximately 10% of collicular neurons of the little brown bat show a "paradoxical latency-shift (PLS)": long latencies to intense sounds but short latencies to weak sounds. These neurons presumably are involved in the processing of target distance information carried by a pair of an intense biosonar pulse and its weak echo. Our current studies show that collicular PLS neurons of the big brown bat are modulated by the corticofugal (descending) system. Electric stimulation of cortical auditory neurons evoked two types of changes in the PLS neurons, depending on the relationship in the best frequency (BF) between the stimulated cortical and recorded collicular neurons. When the BF was matched between them, the cortical stimulation did not shift the BFs of the collicular neurons and shortened their response latencies at intense sounds so that the PLS became smaller. When the BF was unmatched, however, the cortical stimulation shifted the BFs of the collicular neurons and lengthened their response latencies at intense sounds, so that the PLS became larger. Cortical electric stimulation also modulated the response latencies of non-PLS neurons. It produced an inhibitory frequency tuning curve or curves. Our findings indicate that corticofugal feedback is involved in shaping the spectrotemporal patterns of responses of subcortical auditory neurons presumably through inhibition.