Circuitry and Function of the Dorsal Cochlear Nucleus Eric D. Young and Kevin A. Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering and Center for Hearing Sciences Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205 Running title: Circuitry and Function of the DCN To be published in Oertel, D., Popper, A.N., and Fay, R.R. (eds) Integrative Functions in The Mammalian Auditory Pathway New York: Springer-Verlag, 2001. Send Correspondence to: Eric D. Young, Ph.D. Department of Biomedical Engineering Johns Hopkins University 720 Rutland Avenue/505 Traylor Research Building Baltimore, MD 21205 (410) 955-3162 (work) (410) 955-1299 (FAX)
[email protected] 1. Introduction In Chapter 2 of this volume, Smith and Spirou describe the wonderful complexity of the brainstem auditory system. This system forms a collection of parallel pathways which diverge at the first auditory synapse in the brainstem, in the cochlear nucleus (CN), and then converge again, at least in a gross anatomical sense, in the inferior colliculus. The CN is a well-studied collection of neural circuits that are diverse both in anatomical and physiological terms (reviewed by Cant 1992; Rhode and Greenberg 1992; Young 1998). These vary from the simplest system, the bushy cells of the ventral cochlear nucleus (VCN; see Yin, Chapter 4), to the most complex, in the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN). The DCN differs from other parts of the CN by having an extensive internal neuropil formed by groups of interneurons (Lorente de Nó 1981; Osen et al. 1990). As a result, the DCN makes significant changes in the auditory representation from its inputs to its outputs.