Synaptic Mechanisms in the Auditory System will provide a basic reference for students, clinicians, and researchers on how synapses in the auditory system function to encode acoustic signals. These mechanisms are the groundwork for all auditory processing, and understanding them requires knowledge of the microphysiology of synapses, cellular biophysics, receptor pharmacology, and an appreciation for what these synapses must do for a living, what unique jobs they carry out.

Synaptic Mechanisms in the Auditory System will provide a basic reference for students, clinicians, and researchers on how synapses in the auditory system function to encode acoustic signals. These mechanisms are the groundwork for all auditory processing, and understanding them requires knowledge of the microphysiology of synapses, cellular biophysics, receptor pharmacology, and an appreciation for what these synapses must do for a living, what unique jobs they carry out.

Basic Mechanisms in Hearing is a collection of papers that discusses the function of the auditory system covering its ultrastructure, physiology, and the mechanism's connection with experimental psychology. Papers review the mechanics, morphology, and physiology of the cochlear, including the physiology of individual hair cells and their synapses. One paper examines the combined physiological and anatomical studies of stimulus coding in the mammalian auditory nervous system. The results of these studies pertain to the latency, frequency selectivity, and time pattern of responses to short tone bursts. Other research compare the cochlear nerve, behavioral, and psychophysical frequency selectivity which show that frequency selectivity of the auditory system occurs at the level of the cochlear nerve, becoming downgraded in end-organ deafness. Other papers discuss neural coding at higher levels such as the feature extraction in the auditory system of bats. Some papers also analyze the specialized hearing mechanisms in animals, for example, the echolocation of bats and in some insects, the function of the swimbladder in fish hearing, as well as the "invertebrate frequency analyzer" in the locust ear. Physiologists, neurophysiologists, neurobiologists, general medical practioners, and EENT specialists will find this collection valuable.

There has been substantial progress in understanding the contributions of the auditory forebrain to hearing, sound localization, communication, emotive behavior, and cognition. The Auditory Cortex covers the latest knowledge about the auditory forebrain, including the auditory cortex as well as the medial geniculate body in the thalamus. This book will cover all important aspects of the auditory forebrain organization and function, integrating the auditory thalamus and cortex into a smooth, coherent whole. Volume One covers basic auditory neuroscience. It complements The Auditory Cortex, Volume 2: Integrative Neuroscience, which takes a more applied/clinical perspective.

The auditory system is a complex neural system composed of many types of neurons connected into networks. One feature that sets the auditory system apart from other sensory systems, such as somatosensory or visual systems, is the many stages of neural processing that occur between the ear in the periphery and the cerebral cortex. Each stage is composed of specialized types of neurons connected in specific microcircuits that perform computations on the information about sound. To understand this processing, all the tools of neuroscience must be employed. The proposed text integrates cell biology, synaptic physiology, and electrophysiology to fully develop the topic, presenting an overview of the functional anatomy of the central auditory system. It is organized based on the neuronal connectivity of the central auditory system, which emphasizes the neurons, their synaptic organization, and their formation of functional pathways and microcircuits. The goal of the book is to stimulate research into the cell biology of the central auditory system and the characteristics of the specific neurons and connections that are necessary for normal hearing. Future research on the development of the central auditory including that employing stem cells will require such information in order to engineer appropriate therapeutic approaches. ​

Cochlear inner hair cells (IHCs) are the genuine sensory receptors that translate sound-borne cochlear vibrations into neuronal signals via ribbon synapses with the spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs). The precise mechanisms of these ribbon synapses, the first relay of the auditory pathway, are still not fully resolved. Sound intensity coding over a wide dynamic range is thought to be fractionated through the SGNs presenting distinct firing characteristics. One hypothesis is that much of this diversity reflects the presynaptic heterogeneity observed among the active zones (AZs) of IHCs. There, a...

There seems little doubt that from the earliest evolutionary beginnings, inhibition has been a fundamental feature of neuronal circuits - even the simplest life forms sense and interact with their environment, orienting or approaching positive stimuli while avoiding aversive stimuli. This requires internal signals that both drive and suppress behavior. Traditional descriptions of inhibition sometimes limit its role to the suppression of action potential generation. This view fails to capture the vast breadth of inhibitory function now known to exist in neural circuits. A modern perspective on inhibitory signaling comprises a multitude of mechanisms. For example, inhibition can act via a shunting mechanism to speed the membrane time constant and reduce synaptic integration time. It can act via G-protein coupled receptors to initiate second messenger cascades that influence synaptic strength. Inhibition contributes to rhythm generation and can even activate ion channels that mediate inward currents to drive action potential generation. Inhibition also appears to play a role in shaping the properties of neural circuitry over longer time scales. Experience-dependent synaptic plasticity in developing and mature neural circuits underlies behavioral memory and has been intensively studied over the past decade. At excitatory synapses, adjustments of synaptic efficacy are regulated predominantly by changes in the number and function of postsynaptic glutamate receptors. There is, however, increasing evidence for inhibitory modulation of target neuron excitability playing key roles in experience-dependent plasticity. One reason for our limited knowledge about plasticity at inhibitory synapses is that in most circuits, neurons receive convergent inputs from disparate sources. This problem can be overcome by investigating inhibitory circuits in a system with well-defined inhibitory nuclei and projections, each with a known computational function. Compared to other sensory systems, the auditory system has evolved a large number of subthalamic nuclei each devoted to processing distinct features of sound stimuli. This information once extracted is then re-assembled to form the percept the acoustic world around us. The well-understood function of many of these auditory nuclei has enhanced our understanding of inhibition's role in shaping their responses from easily distinguished inhibitory inputs. In particular, neurons devoted to processing the location of sound sources receive a complement of discrete inputs for which in vivo activity and function are well understood. Investigation of these areas has led to significant advances in understanding the development, physiology, and mechanistic underpinnings of inhibition that apply broadly to neuroscience. In this series of papers, we provide an authoritative resource for those interested in exploring the variety of inhibitory circuits and their function in auditory processing. We present original research and focused reviews touching on development, plasticity, anatomy, and evolution of inhibitory circuitry. We hope our readers will find these papers valuable and inspirational to their own research endeavors.