Influence of sound pressure level on the processing of amplitude modulations by auditory neurons of the locust

Typical features of natural sounds are amplitude changes at different time scales. In many species, amplitude modulations constitute decisive cues to recognize communication signals. Since these signals should be recognizable over a broad intensity range, we investigated how the encoding of amplitude modulations by auditory neurons depends on sound pressure level. Identified neurons that represent different processing stages in the locusts’ auditory pathway were stimulated with sinusoidal modulations of a broad band noise carrier, at different intensities, and characteristic parameters of modulation transfer functions (MTFs) were determined. The corner frequencies of temporal MTFs turned out to be independent of intensity for all neurons except one. Furthermore, for none of the neurons investigated corner frequencies were significantly correlated with spike rate, indicating a remarkable intensity invariance of the upper limits of temporal resolution. The shape of the tMTFs changed with increasing intensity from a low-pass to a band-pass for receptors and local neurons, while no consistent change was observed for ascending neurons. The best modulation frequency depended on intensity and spike rate, especially for receptors and local neurons. Remarkably, the adaptation state of some neurons turned out to be independent of the spike rate during the modulation part of the stimulus.