Auditory system articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Complex auditory stimuli such as courtship song are sensed by mechanosensory neurons (JONs) in Drosophila antennae. Here the authors report two forms of adaptation in JONs that correct for antennal position (mean) as well as background sound intensity (variance) to maintain sensitivity to natural sensory stimuli.

    • Jan Clemens
    • , Nofar Ozeri-Engelhard
    •  & Mala Murthy

  • Article
    | Open Access

     In fish, water motion is detected by mechanosensitive hair cells located in the lateral line. Here the authors show that the molecular machinery for mechanotransduction, including transmembrane channel-like 2b (Tmc2b), varies depending on both hair cell location and hair bundle orientation.

    • Shih-Wei Chou
    • , Zongwei Chen
    •  & Brian M. McDermott Jr.

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Advances in multi-neuron recordings and optogenetic manipulation have resulted in an interrogation of the function of specific cortical cell types in auditory cortex during sound processing. Here, the authors review this literature and discuss the merits of integrating computational approaches from dynamic network science.

    • Jennifer M. Blackwell
    •  & Maria N. Geffen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Perception can be explained by predictive coding, but it is unclear how this theory applies at the single-neuron level. Here, authors describe how auditory patterns are encoded and detected by single neurons along the auditory pathway, demonstrating that prediction error exists in single auditory neurons.

    • Gloria G. Parras
    • , Javier Nieto-Diego
    •  & Manuel S. Malmierca

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Permanent hearing loss occurs in many cancer patients treated with cisplatin. In this study, the authors examine cisplatin pharmacokinetics in the cochleae of mice and humans showing that cisplatin is retained for months to years after treatment.

    • Andrew M. Breglio
    • , Aaron E. Rusheen
    •  & Lisa L. Cunningham

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Perception can be swayed by prior context. Here the authors report an auditory illusion in which sounds with ambiguous pitch shifts are perceived as shifting upward or downward based on the preceding contextual sounds, explore the neural correlates, and propose a probabilistic model based on temporal binding.

    • Claire Chambers
    • , Sahar Akram
    •  & Daniel Pressnitzer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mutations inGPSM2cause a rare disease characterized by deafness and brain abnormalities. Here the authors show that Gpsm2 forms a molecular complex with a heterotrimeric G-protein subunit, whirlin and a myosin motor to regulate actin dynamics in neurons and auditory hair cell stereocilia.

    • Stephanie A. Mauriac
    • , Yeri E. Hien
    •  & Mireille Montcouquiol

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A point mutation in the gap-junction protein connexin 30 stops early onset age-related hearing loss. Here, the authors show that gap junctions contribute to cochlear micromechanics and that cochlear amplification is likely controlled by extracellular potentials in vicinity of the cochlear sensory cells.

    • Victoria A. Lukashkina
    • , Snezana Levic
    •  & Ian J. Russell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hidden hearing loss (HHL) is an auditory neuropathy that impairs one’s ability to hear, particularly in a noisy environment. Here the authors show that in mice, transient loss of cochlear Schwann cells results in permanent disruption of the cochlear heminodal structure, leading to auditory deficits characteristic of HHL.

    • Guoqiang Wan
    •  & Gabriel Corfas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    One can easily identify if multiple sounds are originating from a single source yet the neural mechanisms underlying this process are unknown. Here the authors show that temporally coherent sounds elicit changes in receptive field dynamics of auditory cortical neurons in ferrets only when paying attention.

    • Kai Lu
    • , Yanbo Xu
    •  & Shihab A. Shamma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Experience constantly shapes perception, but the neural mechanisms of this rapid plasticity are unclear. Here, Holdgraf et al. record neural activity in the human auditory cortex and show that listening to normal speech elicits rapid plasticity that increases the neural gain for features of sound that are key for speech intelligibility.

    • Christopher R. Holdgraf
    • , Wendy de Heer
    •  & Frédéric E. Theunissen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    We can often ‘fill in’ missing or occluded sounds from a speech signal—an effect known as phoneme restoration. Leonard et al. found a real-time restoration of the missing sounds in the superior temporal auditory cortex in humans. Interestingly, neural activity in frontal regions prior to the stimulus can predict the word that the participant would later hear.

    • Matthew K. Leonard
    • , Maxime O. Baud
    •  & Edward F. Chang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neurons in the auditory midbrain are known to modify their firing rates in response to changes in sound intensity. Here the authors show that in guinea pigs, such modifications occur faster when neurons re-encounter the same environment, a phenomenon they term meta-adaptation.

    • Benjamin L. Robinson
    • , Nicol S. Harper
    •  & David McAlpine

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tip-link filaments convey force to activate hair cells, important sensory receptors. Here the authors solve a partial structure of human protocadherin-15, a tip-link component with an unusual Ca2+–free linker that bends and is predicted to confer flexibility to this filament during inner-ear mechanotransduction.

    • Raul Araya-Secchi
    • , Brandon L. Neel
    •  & Marcos Sotomayor

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The avian auditory papilla has many similarities to the mammalian cochlea but whether force generation by hair cells amplifies the travelling wave, as it does in mammals, remains unknown. Here the authors show that the chicken basilar papilla does not have a ‘cochlear amplifier’ and that sharp frequency tuning does not derive from mechanical vibrations.

    • Anping Xia
    • , Xiaofang Liu
    •  & John S. Oghalai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sensory hair cells from the mammalian inner ear do not regenerate. Here, the authors induce direct hair cell formation from mouse embryonic stem cells using a three-dimensional culture system and observe differentiation of Type I and Type II vestibular hair cells and establishment of synapses with neurons.

    • Xiao-Ping Liu
    • , Karl R. Koehler
    •  & Jeffrey R. Holt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Auditory brainstem response (ABR) is used to study temporal encoding of auditory information in music and language. This study utilizes magnetoencephalography to localize both cortical and subcortical origins of the sustained frequency following response (FFR), the ABR component that encodes the periodicity of sound.

    • Emily B. J. Coffey
    • , Sibylle C. Herholz
    •  & Robert J. Zatorre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Visual and auditory systems influence each other during development. Here, the authors show that the onset of eyelid opening regulates critical points during which the auditory cortex is sensitive to hearing loss or the restoration of hearing

    • Todd M. Mowery
    • , Vibhakar C. Kotak
    •  & Dan H. Sanes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The auditory cortex Te2 represents a key node for the assignment of the affective value to sensory stimuli in rodents. Using pharmacogenetic manipulations, this study shows that in Te2 there are neurons which respond to the emotional valence of sounds and their inactivation impairs emotional memories retrieval.

    • Anna Grosso
    • , Marco Cambiaghi
    •  & Benedetto Sacchetti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study uses functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans and monkeys to show similar ventral frontal and opercular cortical responses when processing sequences of auditory nonsense words. The study indicates that this frontal region is involved in evaluating the order of incoming sounds in a sequence, a process that may be conserved in primates.

    • Benjamin Wilson
    • , Yukiko Kikuchi
    •  & Christopher I. Petkov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Potassium is necessary for the mechanical-electrical transduction needed for hearing. Here the authors study mice lacking the potassium channel KCNK5 and show that these channels are mostly expressed in the outer sulcus and are required for hearing, pointing to their essential role in potassium recycling.

    • Yves Cazals
    • , Michelle Bévengut
    •  & Christian Gestreau

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exposure to memory cues during sleep improves subsequent memory recall. Here the authors demonstrate that presenting an additional auditory stimulus during a critical time window following the memory cue abolishes the memory benefit of cueing and its oscillatory correlates during sleep in humans.

    • Thomas Schreiner
    • , Mick Lehmann
    •  & Björn Rasch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inner ear hair cells are non-regenerative mechanosensory cells essential for hearing. Here, with cell-type-specific expression analyses, the authors identify RFX transcription factors as central mediators of their survival during terminal differentiation and thus essential for hearing in mice.

    • Ran Elkon
    • , Beatrice Milon
    •  & Ronna Hertzano

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Defense against environmental threats is essential for survival, yet the neural circuits mediating innate defensive behaviours are not completely understood. Here the authors demonstrate that descending projections from the auditory cortex to the midbrain mediate innate, sound-evoked flight behaviour.

    • Xiaorui R. Xiong
    • , Feixue Liang
    •  & Li I. Zhang

  • Article |

    Failure to attend to visual cues is a common consequence of visual cortical injury. Here, the authors demonstrate that auditory–visual cross-modal behavioural training leads to neural plasticity and reinstatement of visuomotor competency in animals rendered unilaterally blind by visual cortical removal.

    • Huai Jiang
    • , Barry E. Stein
    •  & John G. McHaffie

  • Article |

    Cochlear sensory hair cells produced during development are not replaced after loss so converting the surrounding supporting cells into hair cells could be a potential regenerative strategy. Here the authors show that hair cells can be directly generated from adjacent supporting cells in developing mouse embryos by inhibition of ephrin-B2 signalling.

    • Jean Defourny
    • , Susana Mateo Sánchez
    •  & Brigitte Malgrange

  • Article |

    Auditory sensory hair cells detect sounds by deflection of their actin-based stereocilia, which vary in length. By inducing expression of GFP-actin in mouse hair cells in vivo, Narayanan et al. demonstrate that stereocilia length is regulated by very slow actin turnover, which is restricted to the tips.

    • Praveena Narayanan
    • , Paul Chatterton
    •  & Benjamin J. Perrin

  • Article |

    Abstinent smokers experience affective withdrawal symptoms that contribute to relapse, yet the circuitry and mechanisms underlying these symptoms are unknown. Here the authors identify a critical role for a ventral tegmental area-habenula-interpeduncular circuit in nicotine withdrawal-induced anxiety.

    • Rubing Zhao-Shea
    • , Steven R. DeGroot
    •  & Andrew R. Tapper

  • Article |

    The balancing apparatus of the inner ear relies on the mechanosensory activity of hair cells (HC), which are poorly regenerated upon loss in adult mammals. Here, the authors show that in newborn mice HC regenerate through proliferation and transdifferentiation of activated striolar supporting cells that express Lgr5.

    • Tian Wang
    • , Renjie Chai
    •  & Alan G. Cheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neural pathways to frontal cortex areas of the brain enable communication, but their connectivity is unclear. Petkov et al. use electrical microstimulation and brain imaging to describe different forms of hierarchical effective connectivity that exist between the primate frontal and temporal cortex.

    • Christopher I. Petkov
    • , Yukiko Kikuchi
    •  & Nikos K. Logothetis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Motor activities, such as rhythmic movements, are implicated in regulating attention. Here, the authors find that rhythmic movements sharpen the temporal selection of auditory stimuli by facilitating the perception of relevant stimuli, while actively suppressing the interference from irrelevant stimuli.

    • Benjamin Morillon
    • , Charles E. Schroeder
    •  & Valentin Wyart

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sensory processing relies on information transfer in cortical hierarchies. Using depth recordings of neural activity obtained while individuals with epilepsy listen to spoken sentences, the authors show that ascending and descending information is propagated between cortical regions through distinct neural frequencies.

    • L. Fontolan
    • , B. Morillon
    •  & Anne-Lise Giraud

  • Article |

    Echolocating bats possess an organized map of echo delay in the auditory cortex. Bartenstein et al. investigate the influence of echo-acoustic flow information on the organization of the cortical map, and find that dynamic adaptation of the map is dependent on situation-specific sensory input.

    • Sophia K. Bartenstein
    • , Nadine Gerstenberg
    •  & Uwe Firzlaff

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Novel headphone technology employs bone conduction to enable hearing, but the mechanism behind this remains unclear. Tchumatchenko and Reichenbach now show that bone conduction and subsequent hearing and otoacoustic emissions are in part due to deformation of the cochlear bone.

    • Tatjana Tchumatchenko
    •  & Tobias Reichenbach

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