Joachim Ostwald

• University of Tübingen

Ambient noise influences the availability and use of acoustic information in animals in many ways. While much research has focused on the effects of noise on acoustic communication, here, we present the first study concerned with anthropogenic noise and foraging behaviour. We chose the greater mouse-eared bat (Myotis myotis) as a model species beca...

In this modeling study we wanted to find out why bats of the family Vespertilionidae (and probably also members of other families of bats) use pulses with a certain bandwidth and duration. Previous studies have only speculated on the function of bandwidth and pulse duration in bat echolocation or addressed this problem by assuming that bats optimiz...

Fast frequency modulations (FM) are an essential part of species-specific auditory signals in animals as well as in human speech. Major parameters characterizing non-periodic frequency modulations are the direction of frequency change in the FM sweep (upward/downward) and the sweep speed, i.e., the speed of frequency change. While it is well establ...

Auditory cortical neurons are elements of a neuronal network that decomposes sounds into spectral and temporal information. In particular, their frequency selectivity has been investigated in great detail. Most studies used anaesthetized preparations and found mainly simple V-shaped tuning. The few data available from awake animals indicate that mo...

The vast majority of investigations on central auditory processing so far were conducted under the influence of an anesthetic agent. It remains unclear, however, to what extend even basic response properties of central auditory neurons are influenced by this experimental manipulation. We used a combination of chronic recording in unrestrained anima...

The present study examined the organization of afferent and efferent connections of the rat ventrolateral tegmental area (VLTg) by employing the retrograde and anterograde axonal transport of Fluorogold and Phaseolus vulgaris-leucoagglutinin, respectively. Our interest was focused on whether the anatomical connections of the VLTg would provide evid...

 The present study examined the organization of afferent and efferent connections of the rat ventrolateral tegmental area (VLTg) by employing the retrograde and anterograde axonal transport of Fluorogold and Phaseolus vulgaris-leucoagglutinin, respectively. Our interest was focused on whether the anatomical connections of the VLTg would provide evi...

The effect of the acoustic middle ear reflex (MER) was quantified using electrodes chronically implanted in the middle ears of rats. Cochlear microphonics (CM) and middle ear muscle EMG were measured under light Ketamin anesthesia after stimulation with tone pulses of 5-20 kHz ranging between 75 and 120 dB SPL. With increasing intensity, the CM mea...

We examined responses to pure tones and exponentially frequency-modulated (FM) stimuli in the inferior colliculus of ketamine anesthetized rats. All units responded to both pure-tone and FM stimulation: units responding selectively to FM stimuli were not found. The comparison between responses to many different FM sweeps revealed that activity was...

The effect of microiontophoretically applied gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) on chopper neurons in the ventral cochlear nucleus of the rat is described. The predominantly inhibitory effect of GABA resulted in a change of the regular discharge pattern. The interspike interval increased and the pattern became less regular as indicated by an increase o...

The rat primary auditory cortex was explored for neuronal responses to pure tones and sinusoidally amplitude-modulated (SAM) and frequency-modulated (SFM) stimuli. Units showed phase-locked responses to SAM stimulation (55%) and SFM stimulation (80%), with modulation frequencies up to 18 Hz. Tuning characteristics to the modulation frequency were m...

The effect of microiontophoretically applied gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and its agonists and antagonists on the response pattern of single units in the ventral cochlear nucleus (VCN) of the rat was examined in order to study GABA's physiological function in auditory processing. The effects of the drugs were judged by changes of spontaneous and...

In this study we investigated the effects of possible modulatory transmitters on acoustically responsive neurons of the caudal pontine reticular nucleus (PnC). From previous work in our laboratory it has been suggested that the acoustically responsive giant neurons of this nucleus are the sensorimotor interface mediating the acoustic startle respon...

1. Echolocating bats (Eptesicus fuscus) were trained to discriminate between simulated targets consisting of one or two echo-wavefronts with internal time delays of up to 100 μs. Spectral and temporal properties and total signal energy of the targets were evaluated and predictions for performances of bats derived from receiver models were compared...

The effect of iontophoretic application of serotonin (5-HT) was studied in neurons of the cochlear nucleus in the rat. 5-HT inhibited the spontaneous activity in 71%, and the tone-evoked activity in 32% of the neurons. We also observed an excitatory effect, with a longer latency than that of the inhibition, in 40% of the neurons. In some neurons 5-...

We describe an acoustically evoked potential in the midbrain of the rat which occurred in conjunction with the auditory startle response, 'startle correlated potential'. This potential had a variable latency to the onset of the startle-eliciting acoustic stimuli, but was precisely coupled to the startle response in the electromyogram (EMG) of the t...

We examined the organization of descending projections from auditory and adjacent cortical areas to the inferior colliculus (IC) in the rat by using the retrograde and anterograde transport of wheat germ agglutinin-horseradish peroxidase. Small tracer injections were placed into cytologically defined subnuclei of the IC. On the basis of the resulti...

Electromyographic (EMG) potentials of several head muscles were recorded simultaneously in freely moving rats with chronically implanted electrodes. The startle responses of m. temporalis, m. levator auris, and m. levator labii superior were compared. All muscles showed a parallel decrease in latency and an increase in response elicitability and am...

Electromyographic (EMG) potentials of several head muscles were recorded simultaneously in freely moving rats with chronically implanted electrodes. The startle responses of m. temporalis, m. levator auris, and m. levator labii superior were compared. All muscles showed a parallel decrease in latency and an increase in response elicitability and am...

Bats of the species Eptesicus fuscus have been trained to discriminate a stationary simulated target from a target with a virtual distance that jitters from sound to sound. Similar to Simmons [Science 207, 1336-1338 (1979)], a jitter-detection threshold below 1 microsecond was found. However, Simmons' decreased performance at a time delay jitter of...

Six R h i n o l o p h u s f e r r u m e q u i n u m were trained to fly through an array of vertical or horizontal wires. Obstacle avoidance performance was measured as the percentage of flights in which the bats did not touch the wires (successful flights). Bats with normal mobile pinnae scored between 70% and 90% successful flights both with vert...

An attempt was made to correlate electrophysiological and morphological characteristics of rat ventral cochlear nucleus neurons. Their axonal course and their soma morphology were investigated using the intra-axonal horseradish peroxidase method. Prior to labeling, neurons were characterized by recording their response patterns to acoustic stimulat...

Electromyograms of M. Levator auris and M. Temporalis and movement produced by whole body startle were recorded simultaneously in awake, freely moving rats. Thresholds were 78 db SPL for the L. auris, 80 dB SPL for the ballistic and 81 dB SPL for the Temporalis. The rank ordering of the three thresholds was extremely strict, 188 suprathreshold M. L...

In rat and guinea pig, cochlear efferents to the two ears were labeled simultaneously with different fluorescent tracers. It was found that in both species only few (1-3%) olivo-cochlear neurons were double-labeled and project to both cochleae. In most periolivary regions large olivocochlear neurons (OCN) projecting to the ipsilateral and contralat...

Autonomic and central nervous indices of the orienting response (OR) were investigated in awake human subjects and sleeping rats. Ten acoustic stimuli of 60 dB and two stimuli of 80 dB were presented for 10 s each with a constant interstimulus interval of 50 s. Responses were averaged across subjects for each single trial. An exponential fit to sco...

Investigations in the cat, rat, and guinea pig have shown that two separate populations of neurons form the efferent innervation of the cochlea (Warr and Guinan, 1979; White and Warr, 1983; Strutz and Bielenberg, 1984). Auditory nerve fibers at the base of inner hair cells (IHC) are innervated by small neurons that are located in the region of the...

Geometrical and textural properties of reflecting targets result in a specific filtering of the echolocation sounds used by the various bat species. They are therefore represented in the temporal and spectral structure of the echoes. These echo features can be used as cues for target recognition, classification and discrimination. Target recognitio...

Greater Horseshoe Bats use their long constant frequency (CF) echolocation sounds to distinguish between insect echoes and background clutter. Only insects flapping their wings are persued (Trappe and Schnitzler, 1982). Flying insects produce a species specific complex pattern of frequency and amplitude modulations in the rhythm of wingbeat (acoust...

The origin of olivocochlear efferents was studied in the rat, the guinea pig, and the bats Rhinolophus , Rhinopoma, Tadarida , and Phylostomus by retrograde labeling with HRP and the fluorescent dye fast blue. In all species with the exception of Rhinolophus rouxi two types of cochlear efferents could be found: small neurons located in the lateral...

Tonotopical organization and frequency representation in the auditory cortex of Greater Horseshoe Bats was studied using multi-unit recordings.The auditory responsive cortical area can be divided into a primary and a secondary region on the basis of response characteristics forming a core/belt structure.In the primary area units with best frequenci...

Comparative studies on echolocation in various species of bats reveal differences in the design of transmitters — i.e., the vocal systems producing different echolocation signals — as well as receivers — i.e., the auditory systems evaluating the echoes. Our hypothesis is that these differences reflect adaptations to the specific orientation tasks o...

Greater Horseshoe Bats, Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, use orientation sounds consisting of a long constant frequency (cf) part, followed by a short, downward frequency modulated (fm) part. By lowering their emission frequency during flight they compensate Dopplershifts and keep the cf-part of their echoes in a very small frequency band that is charact...

In the mustache bat (Pteronotus pamellii rubiginosus) the frequency and amplitude of an acoustic signal are represented in the coordinates parallel to the surface of the Doppler-shifted-CF (constant frequency) processing area ofthe primary auditory cortex. In this area all cortical neurons studied were excited by contralateral stimuli, and almost a...

The basic electrophysiological properties of the acoustic middle ear and laryngeal muscle reflexes inMyotis lucifugus are described. The discharge patterns and impulse-count functions obtained from the two middle ear muscles and laryngeal muscles are similar to one another. The response latencies of these two groups of muscle not only depend upon t...