Multi-frequency auditory stimulation disrupts spindling activity in anesthetized animals

It is often implied that during the occurrence of spindle oscillations, thalamocortical neurons do not respond to signals from the outside world. Since recording of sound-evoked activity from cat auditory cortex is common during spindling this implies that sound stimulation changes the spindle-related brain state. Local field potentials and multi-unit activity recorded from cat primary auditory cortex under ketamine anesthesia during successive silence–stimulus–silence conditions were used to investigate the effect of sound on cortical spindle oscillations. Multi-frequency stimulation suppresses spindle waves, as shown by the decrease of spectral power within the spindle frequency range during stimulation as compared with the previous silent period. We show that the percentage suppression is independent of the power of the spindle waves during silence, and that the suppression of spindle power occurs very fast after stimulus onset. The global inter-spindle rhythm was not disturbed during stimulation. Spectrotemporal and correlation analysis revealed that beta waves (15–26 Hz), and to a lesser extent delta waves, were modulated by the same inter-spindle rhythm as spindle oscillations. The suppression of spindle power during stimulation had no effect on the spatial correlation of spindle waves. Firing rates increased under stimulation and spectro-temporal receptive fields could reliably be obtained. The possible mechanism of suppression of spindle waves is discussed and it is suggested that suppression likely occurs through activity of the specific auditory pathway.