The inferior colliculus is an auditory structure where inputs from multiple lower centers converge,
allowing the emergence of complex coding properties of auditory information such as stimulus-specific
adaptation. Stimulus-specific adaptation is the adaptation of neuronal responses to a specific repeated
stimulus, which does not entirely generalize to other new stimuli. This phenomenon provides a mechanism to emphasize saliency and potentially informative sensory inputs. Stimulus-specific adaptation has
been traditionally studied analyzing the somatic spiking output. However, studies that correlate within
the same inferior colliculus neurons their intrinsic properties, subthreshold responses and the level of
acoustic stimulus-specific adaptation are still pending. For this, we recorded in vivo whole-cell patchclamp neurons in the mouse inferior colliculus while stimulating with current injections or the classic
auditory oddball paradigm.
Our data based on cases of ten neuron, suggest that although passive properties were similar, intrinsic
properties differed between adapting and non-adapting neurons. Non-adapting neurons showed a
sustained-regular firing pattern that corresponded to central nucleus neurons and adapting neurons at
the inferior colliculus cortices showed variable firing patterns. Our current results suggest that synaptic
stimulus-specific adaptation was variable and could not be used to predict the presence of spiking
stimulus-specific adaptation. We also observed a small trend towards hyperpolarized membrane potentials in adapting neurons and increased synaptic inhibition with consecutive stimulus repetitions in
all neurons. This finding indicates a more simple type of adaptation, potentially related to potassium
conductances. Hence, these data represent a modest first step in the intracellular study of stimulusspecific adaptation in inferior colliculus neurons in vivo that will need to be expanded with pharmacological manipulations to disentangle specific ionic channels participatio