The changing auditory system: Development, learning, aging and diseaseSound localization behavior in ferrets: Comparison of acoustic orientation and approach-to-target responses
Section snippets
Experimental procedures
All procedures involving animals were performed following local ethical review committee approval and under license from the UK Home Office in accordance with the Animal (Scientific Procedures) Act (1986). Every effort was made to minimize the number of animals used and their suffering. The data for the present study were collected from ten adult pigmented ferrets (Mustela putorius furo) from our breeding colony, which also contributed to other behavioral studies. The apparatus and methods used
Results
All naïve animals typically learned the approach to target task within a week of commencing training, after which we started the data collection. The results presented here are based on the analysis of 43,776 approach-to-target trials that each yielded a good head tracking signal.
Discussion
We have examined the accuracy with which ferrets localize broadband sounds of varying level and duration presented from 1 of 12 loudspeakers within the horizontal plane. We analyzed both the initial head orienting response toward the source of the sound and the subsequent locomotor behavior as the animals approached the speaker from which the stimulus had been presented in order to receive a water reward. Although both measures can be regarded as part of the natural response to sounds presented
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Susan Spires, Jenny Bizley, Rob Campbell and Dan Kumpik for assistance with the data collection. This study was supported by the Wellcome Trust through a Wellcome Principal Research Fellowship to A. J. King and BBSRC grant BB/D009758/1 to J. W. Schnupp and A. J. King.
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Cited by (47)
Simultaneous comparison of two sound localization measures
2014, Hearing ResearchCitation Excerpt :Nodal et al. (2008) compared the two localization behaviors in ferrets and reported that, despite varying the level of difficulty, head orientation invariably preceded the walking response, which led them to suggest that both initial head and conditioned approach responses rely on the same neural processing strategies. The lack of effect of stimulus duration and level (Nodal et al., 2008) may however be explained by the findings of Gai et al. (2013) as they observed that, in azimuth, neither sound level nor duration had a significant effect on localization accuracy except at near-threshold levels. In general, there seems to be a good correlation between the gaze orienting and approach-to-target responses for easy-to-localize stimuli, and our results in the cat were similar to those reported for ferrets in that the correct selections were typically preceded by accurate orienting responses.
New perspectives on the owl's map of auditory space
2014, Current Opinion in NeurobiologyCitation Excerpt :Recent work has reformulated the idea of place coding in the owl's midbrain. This work provided a solution to the neural representation and localization behavior, which displays higher frontal accuracy and a systematic underestimation in the periphery observed in owls and other species [2,33–36]. It was shown that if natural statistics were encoded in the over-representation of frontal space and in the progressive broadening of spatial tuning in the periphery, a population vector could approach Bayesian inference [37••]. (
Effect of head turns on the localization accuracy of sounds in the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris)
2013, Behavioural Brain ResearchCitation Excerpt :In humans, the frontal region represents the area of highest azimuthal resolution [e.g. 10, 11], and in an azimuthal sound localization task, human head turns can serve to orient this region toward the stimulus source [12]. Frontal localization accuracy is superior to lateral localization accuracy also in other species like ferrets [13,14], cats [10], rats [15] and barn owls (Tyto alba) [16]. Similar to human sound localization strategies, starlings may employ the strategy to improve sound localization accuracy under closed-loop conditions through head turns generated to face toward the sound source with the area of highest azimuthal resolution (“strategy of highest resolution”).
Implementation of manual and automated water regulation for rats (Rattus norvegicus) and ferrets (Mustela putorius)
2021, Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal ScienceSilencing cortical activity during sound-localization training impairs auditory perceptual learning
2019, Nature Communications
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Present address: School of Medicine, University of Western Sydney, Narellan Road, Campbelltown, New South Wales 2560, Australia.