Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Yoni Amit, Yossi Yovel
Summary: Many animals, including humans, use vocalizations to communicate. The function of multi-syllabic vocal sequences has been a debated topic, and this study focuses on analyzing fruit-bat vocal communication to address this question. Neural networks were used to encode the vocalizations, and statistical models were used to examine the information conveyed by sequences of vocalizations. The results suggest that fruit-bat vocal sequences potentially convey more contextual information, but the order of syllables within the sequence is not important for context. Further experiments are needed to validate the biological relevance of these findings and the hypothesis that vocal sequences served as precursors in the evolution of animal communication.
Article
Biology
Ella Z. Lattenkamp, Meike Linnenschmidt, Eva Mardus, Sonja C. Vernes, Lutz Wiegrebe, Michael Schutte
Summary: This study showed that deafening had a significant impact on the vocal development of juvenile pale spear-nosed bats, leading to increased vocal activity, shorter, higher-pitched, and more aperiodic vocalizations. The results suggest that the pale spear-nosed bat relies on auditory feedback for vocal development, and without this input, atypical vocalizations are acquired.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Wan-Jhen Wu, Chen-Wen Lu, Sheue-Er Wang, Ching-Lung Lin, Li-Yu Su, Chung-Hsin Wu
Summary: The study showed that MPTP-treated bats exhibited impaired vocal, auditory, orientation and movement functions, which resembled symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Analysis revealed significant changes in protein expression related to various functions, suggesting a potential role of inflammation, oxidative stress, and apoptosis in dopaminergic neurodegeneration.
Article
Clinical Neurology
Anders Sonne Munch, Maria Amat-Foraster, Claus Agerskov, Jesper Frank Bastlund, Kjartan Frisch Herrik, Ulrike Richter
Summary: This study investigates the effects of low doses of ketamine on neural activity in the auditory cortex of rats. It finds that ketamine significantly increases rhythmic signals and adjusts network synchrony in the auditory cortex, which is modulated by the animal's motor state and may be related to the involvement of fast-spiking interneurons.
JOURNAL OF PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Sou Nobukawa, Nobuhiko Wagatsuma, Takashi Ikeda, Chiaki Hasegawa, Mitsuru Kikuchi, Tetsuya Takahashi
Summary: Synchronization of neural activity, especially at the gamma band, plays a crucial role in perceptual functions. Deficits of perceptual functions in psychiatric disorders may be linked to abnormalities in synchronization, possibly due to an altered excitation and inhibition balance. Additionally, local lateral excitatory-excitatory synaptic connections in the cortex with log-normal EPSP distributions are considered important for the emergence of spatiotemporal neural activity.
COGNITIVE NEURODYNAMICS
(2022)
Article
Biology
Myriam Franzke, Christian Kraus, David Dreyer, Keram Pfeiffer, M. Jerome Beetz, Anna L. Stockl, James J. Foster, Eric J. Warrant, Basil el Jundi
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
(2020)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Kristin Weineck, Francisco Garcia-Rosales, Julio C. Hechavarria
Article
Entomology
Martina Held, Kim Le, Uta Pegel, Florian Dersch, M. Jerome Beetz, Keram Pfeiffer, Uwe Homberg
ARTHROPOD STRUCTURE & DEVELOPMENT
(2020)
Article
Neurosciences
Francisco Garcia-Rosales, Luciana Lopez-Jury, Eugenia Gonzalez-Palomares, Yuranny Cabral-Calderin, Manfred Koessl, Julio C. Hechavarria
Summary: Neural oscillations play a central role in important computations in the mammalian brain. The interaction between oscillatory activities in different frequency bands is a powerful mechanism for binding different spatiotemporal scales in neural processing. Phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) is a well-known interaction, but its contribution to sensory representations is still not fully understood. This study investigates PAC dynamics in the frontal-auditory field (FAF) and the auditory cortex (AC) of bats, and reveals distinct PAC profiles in these areas. The findings suggest that different PAC profiles may represent different mechanisms for neuronal processing in frontal and auditory cortices.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Anatomy & Morphology
Eugenia Gonzalez-Palomares, Luciana Lopez-Jury, Francisco Garcia-Rosales, Julio C. Hechavarria
Summary: The study found that mutual information between neuronal responses and acoustic stimuli, as well as response redundancy in pairs of neurons recorded simultaneously, increase exponentially with IC depth in the auditory midbrain. This occurs regardless of the type of sound presented to bats (echolocation or communication), indicating the existence of mutual information and redundancy maps at the midbrain level that cannot be predicted based on the frequency composition of natural sounds and classic neuronal tuning curves.
BRAIN STRUCTURE & FUNCTION
(2021)
Article
Biology
M. Jerome Beetz, Manfred Koessl, Julio C. Hechavarria
Summary: Frugivorous bat Carollia perspicillata adjusts its echolocation behavior in response to acoustic playback by decreasing the terminal peak frequencies of their calls. Bats adapt their calls not only in response to acoustic interference, but also with respect to target distances. Each bat dynamically adjusts different echolocation parameters across and even within experimental days.
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Biology
Tu Anh Thi Nguyen, M. Jerome Beetz, Christine Merlin, Basil el Jundi
Summary: Monarch butterflies migrate from North America to Central Mexico every autumn, relying on celestial cues for orientation. The central complex in their brain helps guide them, with migratory butterflies showing narrower encoding of the sun compared to non-migratory butterflies. This suggests that migratory monarchs need a precise sun compass to keep their direction during their journey.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Eugenia Gonzalez-Palomares, Luciana Lopez-Jury, Johannes Wetekam, Ava Kiai, Francisco Garcia-Rosales, Julio C. Hechavarria
Summary: While studying distress calls in bats, specifically Carollia perspicillata, researchers found sex differences in the distress calling behavior of this species. Male bats were more likely to produce more frequent, louder, harsher, and lower frequency distress vocalizations when handled compared to females, potentially influenced by hormonal, neurobiological, and behavioral differences.
ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
M. Jerome Beetz, Christian Kraus, Myriam Franzke, David Dreyer, Martin F. Strube-Bloss, Wolfgang Rossler, Eric J. Warrant, Christine Merlin, Basil El Jundi
Summary: Animals use an internal compass for navigation, which is crucial for long-distance migrating animals like monarch butterflies. During flight, the heading-direction neurons in monarch butterflies change their tuning, transforming the central-complex network to function as a global compass. This allows for robust heading representation even under unreliable visual scenarios.
Article
Neurosciences
Johannes Wetekam, Julio Hechavarria, Luciana Lopez-Jury, Manfred Koessl
Summary: The present study investigates neural responses to unexpected acoustic inputs in bats and identifies differences in response strength related to deviance detection. The findings suggest the presence of deviance detection in auditory brainstem responses and reveal frequency-specific strategies used by bats to detect unexpected sounds.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Luciana Lopez-Jury, Francisco Garcia-Rosales, Eugenia Gonzalez-Palomares, Manfred Koessl, Julio C. Hechavarria
Summary: Research demonstrates that the presence of acoustic context changes the neuronal discriminability of echolocation and communication calls in awake bats' cortex. It shows that nonselective neurons become category selective with leading context, while neurons preferring communication sounds become nonselective with context. The overall response suppression due to context is stimulus specific and can last up to 1.5 seconds after context offset.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Review
Neurosciences
M. Jerome Beetz, Julio C. Hechavarria
Summary: Echolocation behavior is an important navigation strategy that allows us to understand neural processing related to behavior. Recent research focuses on how natural echolocation signals are encoded in the bat brain and processed in complex environments.
FRONTIERS IN NEURAL CIRCUITS
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Francisco Garcia-Rosales, Luciana Lopez-Jury, Eugenia Gonzalez-Palomares, Johannes Wetekam, Yuranny Cabral-Calderin, Ava Kiai, Manfred Koessl, Julio C. Hechavarria
Summary: This study investigates the dynamic information flow between cortical areas during vocalization using bats as a model, revealing that oscillation patterns can predict the purpose of vocalization and the information flow can change based on the behavioral role of vocalization.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2022)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Luciana Lopez-Jury, Francisco C. Garcia-Rosales, Eugenia Gonzalez-Palomares, Johannes Wetekam, Michael Pasek, Julio Hechavarria
Summary: This study investigated the effects of ketamine on the auditory cortex of bats using in vivo electrophysiology and computational modelling. It was found that ketamine affects the discrimination of contextual information in sounds, especially for low-pitched sounds. Updating the models revealed the underlying mechanisms of ketamine's effects on cortical responses.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Silvio Macias, Kushal Bakshi, Francisco Garcia-Rosales, Julio C. Hechavarria, Michael Smotherman