What the Toadfish Ear Tells the Toadfish Brain About Sound

Of the three, paired otolithic endorgans in the ear of teleost fishes, the saccule is the one most often demonstrated to have a major role in encoding frequencies of biologically relevant sounds. The toadfish saccule also encodes sound level and sound source direction in the phase-locked activity conveyed via auditory afferents to nuclei of the ipsilateral octaval column in the medulla. Although paired auditory receptors are present in teleost fishes, binaural processes were believed to be unimportant due to the speed of sound in water and the acoustic transparency of the tissues in water. In contrast, there are behavioral and anatomical data that support binaural processing in fishes. Studies in the toadfish combined anatomical tract-tracing and physiological recordings from identified sites along the ascending auditory pathway to document response characteristics at each level. Binaural computations in the medulla and midbrain sharpen the directional information provided by the saccule. Furthermore, physiological studies in the central nervous system indicated that encoding frequency, sound level, temporal pattern, and sound source direction are important components of what the toadfish ear tells the toadfish brain about sound.