Neurons in cat primary auditory cortex sensitive to correlates of auditory motion in three-dimensional space

Amplitude modulation at the receiver's ears is a characteristic of moving sound sources. When a sound source moves from side to side, stimulus intensity decreases in one ear and increases in the other. When a sound source moves toward or away from the organism, the two ears receive correlated increases or decreases in sound level. We recorded from single cells in the auditory cortex while presenting amplitude modulated pure tones to the two ears which stimulated motion either toward or away from the organism, or from side to side. Our results indicate that auditory cortex neurons can be highly sensitive to these correlates of auditory motion in three dimensional space. Three major classes of neurons were encountered. These included 1) neurons sensitive to azimuthal stimulus motion, 2) neurons sensitive to motion directly toward or away from the organism, and 3) monaural-like neurons. More toward-preferring neurons than away-preferring neurons were encountered, and more units preferred contralateral-directed than ipsilateral-directed movement. The different classes of direction-selective neurons were spatially segregated from each other within the cortex and appear to occur in columns. In addition to their selectivity for different directions of simulated sound source motion, auditory cortex neurons could also be highly selective to AM ramp rate and excursion; these are correlates of sound source velocity.