Symposium
SUNDAY, 4th - Aula Magna Pab 2
S6 - Neuronal circuit mechanisms for auditory cognition: from learning to communication
Chair
Belen Pardi
IPNP, Inserm, Francia
This symposium highlights how the brain actively interprets sound, integrating sensory inputs with prior experience to support learning, memory, and context-dependent behavior. Speakers will showcase cutting-edge research on auditory circuits—from thalamo-cortical pathways shaping perception and memory, to premotor and mirroring neurons in songbirds encoding self-generated vocalizations—revealing how auditory processing underlies communication, emotion, and adaptive behavior. Together, these talks illuminate the neural mechanisms that link hearing to cognition and the ways they can go awry in neurological and psychiatric disorders.
Jan Gründermann
German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Germany
Fear Loops: Thalamo-cortico-limbic dynamics of aversive learning
Growing evidence supports the view that first- and higher-order sensory thalamus is an active participant in adaptive behavior rather than a solely passive sensory relay. The auditory thalamus (medial geniculate body, MGB) is necessary for auditory fear conditioning and we have identified state-dependent plastic MGB neurons whose responses are selectively reshaped during high fear states and fear extinction. This plasticity is mediated by cholinergic control. In addition to classical auditory fear conditioning, which results in passive freezing behavior, MGB activity patterns are furthermore changed during learned escape and active avoidance. These dynamic changes in MGB activity are accompanied by changes in inhibitory regulation from the thalamic reticular nucleus, suggesting circuit-level control of thalamic plasticity across behavioral states.
Andrea Santi
John Hopkins University, United States of America
Revealing hidden knowledge in amnestic mice
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a form of dementia in which memory and cognitive decline is thought to arise from underlying neurodegeneration. These cognitive impairments, however, are transient when they first appear and can fluctuate across disease progression. Here, we investigate the neural mechanisms underlying fluctuations of performance in amnestic mice. We trained APP/PS1+ mice on a cortically dependent auditory go/no-go task that dissociated learning of task contingencies (knowledge) from its more variable expression under reinforcement (performance). APP/PS1+ exhibited significant performance deficits compared to control mice that were accompanied by aberrant cortical responsivity, stimulus selectivity, and higher-order encoding of reward prediction. Strikingly, behavioral deficits immediately reversed on probe (non-reinforced) trials, when APP/PS1+ mice showed improved stimulus selectivity and recovery of normal reward prediction signaling. Our results suggest that the amnestic phenotype is transient, contextual, and endogenously reversible, and provide neural evidence that stimulus-action knowledge remained intact despite variable ongoing performance. Thus, memory deficits commonly observed in amnestic mouse models, and potentially at early stages of dementia in humans, may relate more to contextual drivers of performance than degeneration of the underlying memory traces. Now, we are exploring these cognitive fluctuations in a more complex and naturalistic setup, to assess continual multi-task learning, memory interference, and retrieval through aging, using our new, fully automated home-cage platform, the Mouse Playground.
Ana Amador
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Departamento de Fisica, Argentina
Neural coding of complex auditory stimuli in songbirds
Ana Amador will talk about how songbirds process and encode complex auditory signals, focusing on how hearing is essential both for learning and maintaining their songs. She will describe how brain circuits in songbirds—particularly the premotor nucleus HVC, which receives input from auditory cortex—contain neurons that respond selectively to the bird’s own song and show “mirroring” activity during both singing and listening. Her recent work highlights how neural activity in HVC synchronizes with the rhythm of song, providing insight into how complex sounds are represented in the brain.
Belén Pardi
IPNP, Inserm, France
Auditory thalamocortical interactions for adaptive perception
Perception is an active process by which the brain makes sense of the surrounding world, continuously integrating sensory signals with internal priors. This process is profoundly affected in major psychiatric disorders, yet the circuit mechanisms that support it—and how they are disrupted in psychosis—remain poorly understood. Recent studies have highlighted the contribution of higher-order sensory thalamo-cortical circuits in processing internal signals. In this talk, I will present our work investigating the role of auditory circuits in memory-related processing and discuss our recent efforts to uncover how their dysfunction may contribute to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.