Edward L. Bartlett, Ph.D.
Meet the Researcher
The Research
Purdue University
Cellular mechanisms contributing to in vivo neuronal responses in auditory thalamic neurons
Auditory thalamic neurons provide sensory input to the auditory cortex, and aberrations in the auditory thalamus are correlated with dyslexia, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease in humans. Despite its importance in normal and abnormal hearing, the mechanisms by which auditory thalamic neurons process sound are poorly understood. Neuronal recordings in live animals typically only provide the final output of the neuron, while the complex integration of excitatory and inhibitory inputs that led to the output is unknown. Though dissociated from a full neural network, recording intracellularly from neurons in brain slices allows excellent control of the cellular environment and detailed observations of the cellular and synaptic mechanisms by which neural responses are generated. From these observations, it becomes possible to formulate and test mechanistic hypotheses about the input patterns that produced a given neural response, as well as isolating the roles of different cellular mechanisms in normal and pathological responses. This research will study individually, by intracellular recordings, the properties of the main inputs to auditory thalamic neurons. Then the inputs will be combined in an attempt to recreate responses to repetitive sounds observed in live animals, since representations of repetition rates are important for encoding speech and other relevant sounds.