The axonal projections from the cochlear nuclear complex to the inferior colliculus (IC) were examined using the retrograde transport of horseradish peroxidase. Thin sheets of neurons in the dorsal and ventral cochlear nuclei were found to project axons in a topographic fashion to restricted laminae of the central nucleus of the IC; the dorsal cochlear nucleus was also found to project axons to...

The presence of synaptophysin, a presynaptic Ca2+ binding glycoprotein, has been analyzed in the cochlear nucleus complex of the adult cat using an antisynaptophysin monoclonal antibody. Synaptophysin immunoreactivity was differently distributed between regions of cochlear nuclei. Terminal boutons contacting directly with neurons (cell bodies and dendrites) or in the neuropil of ventral and dor...

a two-variable integrate and fire model is presented to study the role of transient outward potassium currents in producing temporal aspects of dorsal cochlear nucleus (dcn) pyramidal cells with different profiles namely the chopper, the pauser and the buildup. this conductance based model is a reduced version of km-lif model (meng & rinzel, 2010) which captures qualitative firing features of a...

Certain distinct populations of neurons in the dorsal cochlear nucleus are inhibited by a neural source that is responsive to a wide range of acoustic frequencies. In this study, we examined the glycine immunoreactivity of two types of ventral cochlear nucleus neurons (planar and radiate) in the rat which project to the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) and thus, might be responsible for this inhib...

What are the mechanisms that enhance the response to behaviorally relevant external stimuli? In this issue of Neuron, Kuo and Trussell show that in the dorsal cochlear nucleus, noradrenaline functions to simultaneously reduce spontaneous inhibitory inputs while increasing evoked inhibition.

The cochlear nucleus, the first central auditory structure, performs initial stimulus processing and segregation of information into parallel ascending pathways. It also receives nonauditory inputs. Here we show in vivo that responses of dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) principal neurons to sounds can change significantly depending on the presence or absence of inputs from the somatosensory dorsal...

The origins of extrinsic projections to the guinea pig dorsal and ventral cochlear nuclei were identified by examining the retrograde transport of horseradish peroxidase conjugated to wheatgerm agglutinin following its injection into each of these divisions. Major projections originated in periolivary regions of the superior olivary complex, the contralateral cochlear nucleus and the inferior c...

This study provides a detailed analysis of the appearances and distributions of neurons projecting from one cochlear nucleus to the other. Injections of wheatgerm agglutinin conjugated to horseradish peroxidase were made into ventral or dorsal cochlear nucleus of the guinea pig. Retrogradely labeled cells in the opposite cochlear nucleus were examined and quantified. Three major categories of l...

The present study sought to locate putative glutamatergic or aspartatergic pathways in the auditory system of cats and guinea pigs. We injected 0.06 to 3 mM D-[3H] aspartate (D-Asp) in the cochlear nucleus before preparation for light microscopic autoradiography. At short survival times (15 and 40 min) there was heavy labeling of astrocytic somata. Labeling patterns typical of cochlear nerve en...