ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2024
How auditory neurons count temporal intervals and decode information.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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3 citing papers in PubMed.
- A computational theory of short-term synaptic plasticity: synapses learn to tell time.Research square · 2026Article
- Long-interval neurons are selective for slower pulse rates in chorus frogs that are sympatric versus allopatric with congeneric heterospecifics.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Article
- Evidence that interval-counting neurons play a critical role in call recognition by Cope's gray treefrogs.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Article
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7 authors.
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Abstract
The numerical sense of animals includes identifying the numerosity of a sequence of events that occur with specific intervals, e.g., notes in a call or bar of music. Across nervous systems, the temporal patterning of spikes can code these events, but how this information is decoded (counted) remains elusive. In the anuran auditory system, temporal information of this type is decoded in the midbrain, where "interval-counting" neurons spike only after at least a threshold number of sound pulses have occurred with specific timing. We show that this decoding process, i.e., interval counting, arises from integrating phasic, onset-type and offset inhibition with excitation that augments across successive intervals, possibly due to a progressive decrease in "shunting" effects of inhibition. Because these physiological properties are ubiquitous within and across central nervous systems, interval counting may be a general mechanism for decoding diverse information coded/encoded in temporal patterns of spikes, including "bursts," and estimating elapsed time.
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