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Updated: Feb 1, 2026

Stereotactically-guided Ablation of the Rat Auditory Cortex, and Localization of the Lesion in the Brain
Published on: October 11, 2017
Auditory cortex modulates call duration in rats
Wei Tang1, Miguel Concha-Miranda1, Michael Brecht2,3
1Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
None:
The flexibility of human vocal production is well studied, but the direct role of the auditory system in regulating vocalizations in rodents remains largely unexplored. We show that during vocalizations, a fraction of rat auditory cortex neurons shows pre-call activity and different patterns of responses during calls and playback of calls. Additionally, we classified five auditory cortical vocalization responses: pre-call activated, onset activated, onset suppressed, ramping activated and ramping suppressed neurons. Intriguingly, onset suppressed cells can predict vocalization duration and occurrence. Injecting the auditory cortex with muscimol (GABA_A receptor agonist) prolonged vocalizations, while injecting the auditory cortex with gabazine (GABA_A receptor antagonist) shortened them. Similar reductions in call duration were observed during external white-noise stimulation of the auditory cortex and/or other auditory brain structures, resembling the effects of gabazine. Together, neuronal recordings, pharmacological interference and noise induced vocal modifications indicate direct modulation of vocal productions by the rat auditory cortex.
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