Dissociation of task engagement and arousal effects in auditory cortex and midbrain
- Oregon Health and Science University, United States
- Washington State University, United States
Abstract
Both generalized arousal and engagement in a specific task influence sensory neural processing. To isolate effects of these state variables in the auditory system, we recorded single-unit activity from primary auditory cortex (A1) and inferior colliculus (IC) of ferrets during a tone detection task, while monitoring arousal via changes in pupil size. We used a generalized linear model to assess the influence of task engagement and pupil size on sound-evoked activity. In both areas, these two variables affected independent neural populations. Pupil size effects were more prominent in IC, while pupil and task engagement effects were equally likely in A1. Task engagement was correlated with larger pupil; thus, some apparent effects of task engagement should in fact be attributed to fluctuations in pupil size. These results indicate a hierarchy of auditory processing, where generalized arousal enhances activity in midbrain, and effects specific to task engagement become more prominent in cortex.
Data availability
Neurophysiology data will be made available via Zenodo. Software used for analysis is available via GitHub.
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Dissociation of task engagement and arousal effects in auditory cortex and midbrain -- dataset.Zenodo, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4437077.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (F31 DC014888)
- Daniela Saderi
National Institutes of Health (R01 DC04950)
- Stephen V David
National Institutes of Health (R01 EB028155)
- Stephen V David
National Institutes of Health (F31 DC016204)
- Zachary P Schwartz
National Science Foundation (GVPRS0015A2)
- Charles R Heller
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All procedures were approved by the Oregon Health and Science University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (protocol IP1561) and conform to National Institutes of Health standards.
Copyright
© 2021, Saderi et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Dissociation of task engagement and arousal effects in auditory cortex and midbrain
eLife 10:e60153.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.60153
