Communication call-evoked gamma-band activity in the auditory cortex of awake bats is modified by complex acoustic features

Mustached bats emit an acoustically rich variety of calls for social communication. In the posterior primary auditory cortex, activity of neural ensembles measured as local field potentials (LFPs) can uniquely encode each call type. Here we report that LFPs recorded in response to calls contain oscillatory activity in the gamma-band frequency range (> 20 Hz). The power spectrum of these high-frequency oscillations shows either two peaks of energy (at 40 Hz and 100 Hz), or just one peak at 40 Hz. The relative power of gamma-band activity in the power spectrum of a call-evoked LFP correlates significantly with the ‘harmonic complexity’ of a call. Gamma-band activity is attenuated with reversal of frequency-modulated calls. Amplitude modulation, even when asymmetric across call reversals, has no significant effect on gamma-band activity. These results provide the first experimental evidence that complex features within different groups of species-specific calls modify the power spectrum of evoked gamma-band activity.