Drivers and modulators in the central auditory pathways
- Department of Neurobiology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
The classic view of auditory information flow depicts a simple serial route from the periphery through tonotopically-organized nuclei in the brainstem, midbrain and thalamus, ascending eventually to the neocortex. Yet, complicating this picture are numerous parallel ascending and descending pathways, whose roles in auditory processing are poorly defined. To address this ambiguity, we have identified several anatomical and physiological properties that distinguish the auditory glutamatergic pathways into two groups that we have termed “drivers” and “modulators”. Driver pathways are associated with information-bearing pathways, while modulator pathways modify these principal information streams. These properties illuminate the potential roles of some previously ill-defined auditory pathways, and may be extended further to categorize either unknown or mischaracterized pathways throughout the auditory system.
Keywords:
drivers, modulators, inferior colliculus, medial geniculate body, thalamus, auditory cortex
Citation:
Front. Neurosci. (2010) 4:1. doi: 10.3389/neuro.01.014.2010
Received: 14 December 2009;
Paper pending published: 15 January 2010;
Accepted: 26 January 2010;
Published online: 15 May 2010
Edited by:
Mriganka Sur, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Reviewed by:
Preston E. Garraghty, Indiana University, USA
Christoph E. Schreiner, University of California, San Francisco, USA
Copyright:
© 2010 Lee and Sherman. This is an open-access publication subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
*Correspondence:
Charles C. Lee began his scientific training at the California Institute of Technology, where he received his B.Sc. with Honors in Chemistry and Biology. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley under the mentorship of the late Prof. Jeffery A. Winer. His current research at the University of Chicago, under the mentorship of Prof. S. Murray Sherman, focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms supporting information processing in sensory systems. clee@bsd.uchicago.edu