Postnatal development of auditory central evoked responses and thalamic cellular properties.

During development, the sense of hearing changes rapidly with age, especially around hearing onset. During this period, auditory structures are highly sensitive to alterations of the acoustic environment, such as hearing loss or background noise. This sensitivity includes auditory temporal processing, which is important for processing complex sounds, and for acquiring reading and language skills.

Postnatal development of synaptic properties of the GABAergic projection from the inferior colliculus to the auditory thalamus.

The development of auditory temporal processing is important for processing complex sounds as well as for acquiring reading and language skills. Neuronal properties and sound processing change dramatically in auditory cortex neurons after the onset of hearing. However, the development of the auditory thalamus or medial geniculate body (MGB) has not been well studied over this critical time window.

A computational model of inferior colliculus responses to amplitude modulated sounds in young and aged rats.

The inferior colliculus (IC) receives ascending excitatory and inhibitory inputs from multiple sources, but how these auditory inputs converge to generate IC spike patterns is poorly understood. Simulating patterns of in vivo spike train data from cellular and synaptic models creates a powerful framework to identify factors that contribute to changes in IC responses, such as those resulting in age-related loss of temporal processing. A conductance-based single neuron IC model was constructed, and its responses were compared to those observed during in vivo IC recordings in rats.