Discrimination of partial from whole ultrasonic vocalizations using a go/no-go task in mice.

J Acoust Soc Am

Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, New York 14260.

Published: December 2014

AI Article Synopsis

  • Mice are often used in hearing research, but their ability to perceive their own ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) hasn’t been thoroughly studied.
  • Researchers predicted that, like humans and birds, mice would find it easier to recognize the beginning of USVs compared to the end.
  • In experiments, mice struggled to distinguish incomplete USVs from complete ones, particularly when the initial parts were used, indicating they perceive the start of USVs as more similar to the whole version, paralleling findings in other species.

Article Abstract

Mice are a commonly used model in hearing research, yet little is known about how they perceive conspecific ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs). Humans and birds can distinguish partial versions of a communication signal, and discrimination is superior when the beginning of the signal is present compared to the end of the signal. Since these effects occur in both humans and birds, it was hypothesized that mice would display similar facilitative effects with the initial portions of their USVs. Laboratory mice were tested on a discrimination task using operant conditioning procedures. The mice were required to discriminate incomplete versions of a USV target from a repeating background containing the whole USV. The results showed that the mice had difficulty discriminating incomplete USVs from whole USVs, especially when the beginning of the USVs were presented. This finding suggests that the mice perceive the initial portions of a USV as more similar to the whole USV than the latter parts of the USV, similar to results from humans and birds.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4257972PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4900564DOI Listing

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