Auditory neural networks for attention prefer biologically significant sounds and exhibit sexual dimorphism in anurans

Abstract

Allocating attention to biologically relevant stimuli in a complex environment is critically important for survival and reproductive success. In humans attention modulation is regulated by the frontal cortex, and often reflected by changes in specific components of the event-related potential (ERP). Although brain networks for attention modulation have been widely studied in primates and in avian species, little is known about attention modulation in amphibians. The present study aims to investigate the attention modulation networks in an anuran species, the Emei music frog (Babina daunchina). Male music frogs produce advertisement calls from within underground nest burrows that modify the acoustic features of the calls and both male and females prefer calls produced from inside burrows. We broadcast call stimuli to male and female music frogs while simultaneously recording electroencephalographic (EEG) signals from the telencephalon and mesencephalon. Granger causal connectivity analysis was used to elucidate functional brain networks within the time window of ERP components. The results show that calls produced from inside nests which are highly sexually attractive result in the strongest brain connections; both ascending and descending connections involving the left telencephalon were stronger in males while those in females were stronger with the right telencephalon. Our results indicate that the frog brain allocates neural attention resources to highly attractive sounds within the window of early components of ERP, and that such processing is sexually dimorphic presumably reflecting the different reproductive strategies of males and females.