Can inferior colliculus neurons predict behavioral auditory discrimination in noise?

Over the last decades, a large number of studies have described the robustness of auditory cortex responses when target stimuli are presented in situations of acoustic degradations (Nagarajan et al.2002, Mesgarani et al. 2014, Town et al, 2018). In few experiments, comparisons have been made with the resistance to noise observed from subcortical neurons recordings (Schneider and Woolley.2013, Rabinowitz et al .2013). Moreover, several studies claimed that the behavioural discrimination performance correlates with the auditory cortex neuronal responses. In previous experiments performed in anaesthetized guinea pigs (Souffi et al 2020, 2023), we reported that the responses of inferior colliculus neurons were those that showed the highest resistance to noise compared to the other auditory structures. To determine if subcortical neuronal discrimination could be correlated with behavioral auditory discrimination, we trained mice in a Go/No-Go protocol to discriminate between two hetero-specific vocalizations (one CS+ and one CS-) first in silence and then in increasing levels of stationary noise and then of chorus noise.Neuronal recordings were collected in the inferior colliculus of these mice, both in anesthetized conditions and in awake, passively listening conditions but also while the mice were doing the behavior. We compare these data with those from control animals that were similarly and passively exposed to the stimuli.Those data should allow us to determine if neuronal responses from the inferior colliculus can predict the behavioral performances of an animal.