Peripheral control of acoustic signals in the auditory system of echolocating bats

TLDR

Echolocating bats emit intense orientation sounds, which could impair faint echo detection if directly stimulating their ears. The study investigated mechanisms that attenuate self‑stimulation in *Myotis lucifugus*. Researchers examined the middle‑ear‑muscle reflex and its vocalization‑driven contraction as potential attenuation mechanisms. The middle‑ear‑muscle reflex can transiently regulate signal amplitude only at its onset, but its 3–8 ms latency is too slow to attenuate orientation calls; instead, the stapedial muscle receives a vocalization‑driven command, contracts synchronously with vocalization, and its brief 260–320 Hz tetanic contraction shortens self‑stimulation without affecting echoes, while the olivo‑cochlear bundle shows no attenuation.

Abstract

Many species of echolocating bats emit intense orientation sounds. If such intense sounds directly stimulated their ears, detection of faint echoes would be impaired. Therefore, possible mechanisms for the attenuation of self-stimulation were studied with Myotis lucifugus. The acoustic middle-ear-muscle reflex could perfectly and transiently regulate the amplitude of an incoming signal only at its beginning. However, its shortest latency in terms of electromyograms and of the attenuation of the cochlear microphonic was 3-4 and 4-8 msec, respectively, so that these muscles failed to attenuate orientation signals by the reflex. The muscles, however, received a message from the vocalization system when the bat vocalized, and contracted synchronously with vocalization. The duration of the contraction-relaxation was so short that the self-stimulation was attenuated, but the echoes were not. The tetanus-fusion frequency of tha stapedium muscle ranged between 260 and 320/sec. Unlike the efferent fibres in the lateral-line and vestibular systems, the olivo-cochlear bundle showed no sign of attenuation of self-stimulation.