ArticleHearing research2026
Formant-frequency encoding in the inferior colliculus of awake rabbit: Physiological and model responses.
Article in Hearing research, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Most neurons in the inferior colliculus (IC), a key integration hub in the ascending auditory pathway, are sensitive to important features of vowels, periodic sounds with spectral peaks referred to as formants. A recent psychoacoustic study found that increased formant bandwidth elevates formant-frequency discrimination thresholds in human listeners, hypothesized to be due to reduced neural fluctuation (NF) contrast along the tonotopic axis (Carney et al., 2023). The current study tested this hypothesis and investigated the neural mechanisms underlying IC responses in awake rabbit to single-formant, synthetic, vowel-like stimuli with varied bandwidths. Formant frequencies were shifted past the neural characteristic frequency to infer response profiles across the tonotopic axis. The NF profile is converted into a rate-place profile by IC neurons that are sensitive to amplitude modulations. Two stimulus paradigms were used to assess the role of energy cues, which vary when formant bandwidths are changed: one matched the overall levels of synthetic formants across conditions, and the other matched the peak levels. The discharge-rate profiles as a function of formant bandwidth were consistent across both paradigms, thus energy alone did not determine IC rates, which were typically higher for narrower formant bandwidths. Formant-frequency discrimination thresholds estimated from single-neuron responses were higher than human thresholds but had similar trends. IC neurons are also sensitive to fast frequency sweeps (chirps) which are present in vowels; formant-frequency discrimination thresholds based on neural responses were correlated with the sensitivity of IC neurons to chirp velocity but not direction. Responses of IC neurons with band-suppressed, but not band-enhanced, modulation transfer functions supported the hypothesis that IC neurons encode vowels as predicted by neural-fluctuation profiles. Trends in responses of IC neurons with both types of modulation transfer function were explained for a range of formant bandwidths and both stimulus paradigms by a model with same-frequency inhibition and excitation plus broadband, modulation-sensitive inhibition.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.