Features of the auditory development of the short-tailed Brazilian opossum, Monodelphis domestica: evoked responses, neonatal vocalizations and synapses in the inferior colliculus.

The onset of hearing in anesthetized South American opossums (Monodelphis domestica) was determined by the measurement of evoked potentials to click stimuli from the vertex of the skull immediately over the inferior colliculus. Evoked potentials were first recorded at postnatal day 24 at a threshold of 83 dB SPL; thresholds declined over subsequent weeks to below 58 dB at 40 days. Isolation calls emitted by the pups had stereotypic spectra with peaks at near 13 kHz and an octave higher. Such calls declined in frequency by day 32 and were not emitted at day 40. The peak frequency of the calls matched very closely the best frequency of hearing of adult Monodelphis. The number of synapses in the inferior colliculus increased at day 26; when plotted in relation to the number of cells, synaptic density increased steeply from day 27 after the animal had begun to hear. This suggests that environmental sound has a potent effect on the development of synapses in the auditory system.

Proprioceptive versus visual control in autistic children.

The autistic child's presumed preference for proximal rather than distal sensory input was studied by requiring that autistic, retarded, and normal subjects adapt to a prism-induced lateral displacement of the visual field. Only autistic subjects demonstrated transfer of adaptation to the nonadapted hand, indicative of a reliance on proprioception rather than vision to accomplish adaptation. Such reliance on proprioception was explained as an alternative strategy compensating for an inability to use current visual control of reaching rather than as a preference for proximal information per se.

Auditory sensitivity of the albino rat.

The auditory sensitivity of the (Sprague-Dawley strain) albino rat was determined by the conditioned suppression technique. The three animals tested were found to have a range of hearing from 250 Hz to 80 kHz at 70 dB (SPL). They were most sensitive to tones of 8 kHz but were almost as sensitive at 38 kHz. In contrast to previously published data, there was no evidence for a highly specialized tuning of the audiogram to tones in the 30-40 kHz region. In general, the audiogram of this strain of albino rat is quite typical of mammals of the same size and, furthermore, closely approximates the mammalian mean in most essential features.

Contribution of auditory cortex to sound localization in the monkey (Macaca mulatta).

Monkeys with lesions of auditory cortex were tested for their ability to localize the source of brief sounds. Although those deprived of primary auditory cortex bilaterally were able to indicate the direction of a sound with near-normal acuity, they were unable to locate its source. This dissociation of abilities suggest that the role of auditory cortex in sound localization is not so much sensory or perceptual as it is auditomotor or associative. Thus, sound localization joins loudness, pitch, and most other traditional attributes of sound as dimensions whose discrimination does not depend on auditory cortex. The question would now seem to turn to whether or not auditory cortex is necessary for any sensory discrimination whatever.

Neuroanatomical basis of binaural phase-difference analysis for sound localization: a comparative study.

Four varieties of mammals whose medial superior olives range from large to none at all were tested for their ability to localize single, brief tone pips at various frequencies. Although each animal could localize high-frequency tone pips, their ability to localize middle- and low-frequency tone pips corresponded to the size of their medial superior olive (MSO). Since this latter range of frequencies is the one in which binaural phase-difference cues predominate, this anatomical-behavioral correspondence supports the idea that MSO is the chief binaural time-analyzing center for sound localization.

Variation in form of the pyramidal tract and its relationship to digital dexterity.

A morphometric analysis of the pyramidal tract's relation to digital dexterity was performed on data from 69 mammals. The results show that the variation in digital dexterity among mammals corresponds most closely to the variation in place of termination of pyramidal tract fibers within the spinal cord, corresponds less closely to the variation in the size of the tract itself and its constituent fibers, and does not correspond reliably with any other feature yet reported. Since the termination of pyramidal tract fibers on or very near spinal motor neurons is a prerequisite even for the peculiar kind of dexterity seen in some non-primates (e.g., raccoon, kinkajou), this one feature alone seems to be a critical factor.

Origins of anthropoid intelligence.

The development of the extrastriate visual system relative to the striate system was estimated indirectly by measuring the volumes of the lateral posteriorpulvinar complex and lateral geniculate nucleus in six varieties of mammals selected on the basis of their propinquity with Anthropoidea [oppossums, hedgehogs, rats, squirrels, tree shrews and bushbabies]. The same animals were tested on two related behavioral tasks [spatial and visual reversal learning] whose successful achievement requires a simple sort of abstraction. The results show that the ability to learn visual reversal, but not spatial reversal, corresponds closely to the relative degree of development of the extrastriate system. Since the variation in both these behavioral and morphological characteristics also parallels the phylogenetic dimension, the recency of common ancestry to anthropoids, the evolutionary origin of the anthropoid capacity for visual abstraction is suggested.