Spectro-Temporal Receptive Fields of Subthreshold Responses in Auditory Cortex

How do cortical neurons represent the acoustic environment? This question is often addressed by probing with simple stimuli such as clicks or tone pips. Such stimuli have the advantage of yielding easily interpreted answers, but have the disadvantage that they may fail to uncover complex or higher-order neuronal response properties. Here we adopt an alternative approach, probing neuronal responses with complex acoustic stimuli, including animal vocalizations and music. We have used in vivo whole cell methods in the rat auditory cortex to record subthreshold membrane potential fluctuations elicited by these stimuli.