AUTHOR=Bulkin David A., Groh Jennifer M. TITLE=Distribution of visual and saccade related information in the monkey inferior colliculus JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neural Circuits VOLUME=6 YEAR=2012 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neural-circuits/articles/10.3389/fncir.2012.00061 DOI=10.3389/fncir.2012.00061 ISSN=1662-5110 ABSTRACT=

The inferior colliculus (IC) is an essential stop early in the ascending auditory pathway. Though normally thought of as a predominantly auditory structure, recent work has uncovered a variety of non-auditory influences on firing rate in the IC. Here, we map the location within the IC of neurons that respond to the onset of a fixation-guiding visual stimulus. Visual/visuomotor associated activity was found throughout the IC (overall, 84 of 199 sites tested or 42%), but with a far reduced prevalence and strength along recording penetrations passing through the tonotopically organized region of the IC, putatively the central nucleus (11 of 42 sites tested, or 26%). These results suggest that visual information has only a weak effect on early auditory processing in core regions, but more strongly targets the modulatory shell regions of the IC.