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Poster A84 in Poster Session A - Tuesday, August 6, 2024, 4:15 – 6:15 pm, Johnson Ice Rink
Spontaneous Emergence of Periodotopic Map through Neuronal Interference in Auditory Cortex
Jeonghwan Cheon1, Se-Bum Paik1 (); 1Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Pitch perception, the ability to detect the periodicity of a harmonic sound envelope, is a fundamental auditory function that enables the recognition of speech and music. While it is clear how the mechanical filtering of the cochlea extracts frequency information into a tonotopic map, it remains unclear how periodicity is extracted along the auditory pathway. Here, we propose that periodicity processing can spontaneously emerge through interference between the tonotopic maps of the ipsilateral and contralateral auditory pathways. We demonstrated that the chiasm of the bilateral tonotopic maps with tilting generates wiring for two different frequencies. We showed that periodicity coding emerges from the interference of these two frequency components. Next, we simulated the tonotopic and periodotopic maps as a result of this interference and compared them with optical recording data from the primary auditory cortex of cats. Our model can explain the relative organization between tonotopic and periodotopic maps, such as the high-frequency preference of high-pitch areas. These results suggest how a periodotopic map simply develops through neuronal interference within a tonotopically organized auditory pathway.
Keywords: pitch perception periodotopic map developmental model auditory cortex