Strength of the efferent olivocochlear system modifies the normal activity of a central auditory nuclei

DI GUILMI, MARIANO NICOLÁS; GÓMEZ-CASATI, MARÍA EUGENIA; BOERO, LUIS EZEQUIEL; ELGOYHEN, ANA BELÉN

Rio de Janeiro

Congreso; 9th IBRO World Congress on Neuroscience. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.; 2015

International Brain Research Organization

The auditory system in several mammals is immature at birth but precisely organized in adults. Spontaneous activity in the inner ear comes into play to guide this process. The rate of this spontaneous activity is under the control of an olivocochlear efferent pathway that descends from the brain.Along the auditory pathway neurons are tonotopically organized, with cells that are grouped according to their frequency selectivity. Particularly, in the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body (MNTB), neurons are spatially organized along a medio-lateral axis with the most medially located cells responding best to high frequency sounds and lateral cells to low frequency. In this work we studied the MNTB tonotopy in the Chrna9L9´T KI mouse, an animal model with enhanced efferent functionality.