Coding of sound envelopes by inhibitory rebound in neurons of the superior olivary complex in the unanesthetized rabbit.

Most natural sounds (e.g., speech) are complex and have amplitude envelopes that fluctuate rapidly. A number of studies have examined the neural coding of envelopes, but little attention has been paid to the superior olivary complex (SOC), a constellation of nuclei that receive information from the cochlear nucleus. We studied two classes of predominantly monaural neurons: those that displayed a sustained response to tone bursts and those that gave only a response to the tone offset. Our results demonstrate that the off neurons in the SOC can encode the pattern of amplitude-modulated sounds with high synchrony that is superior to sustained neurons. The upper cutoff frequency and highest modulation frequency at which significant synchrony was present were, on average, slightly higher for off neurons compared with sustained neurons. Finally, most sustained and off neurons encoded the level of pure tones over a wider range of intensities than those reported for auditory nerve fibers and cochlear nucleus neurons. A traditional view of inhibition is that it attenuates or terminates neural activity. Although this holds true for off neurons, the robust discharge when inhibition is released adds a new dimension. For simple sounds (i.e., pure tones), the off response can code a wide range of sound levels. For complex sounds, the off response becomes entrained to each modulation, resulting in a precise temporal coding of the envelope.