Convergent processing of auditory and tactile vibration in the inferior colliculus

Abstract

Vibrations are ubiquitous in nature, shaping behavior across the animal kingdom. For mammals, mechanical vibrations acting on the body are detected by mechanoreceptors of the skin and deep tissue and processed by the somatosensory system, while sound waves traveling through air are captured by the cochlea and encoded in the auditory system. Here, we report that mechanical vibrations detected by the body’s Pacinian corpuscle neurons, which are unique in their ability to entrain to high-frequency (40-1000 Hz) environmental vibrations, are prominently encoded by neurons in the lateral cortex of the inferior colliculus (LCIC) of the midbrain. Remarkably, most LCIC neurons receive convergent Pacinian and auditory input and respond more strongly to coincident tactile-auditory stimulation than to either modality alone. Moreover, the LCIC is required for behavioral responses to high frequency mechanical vibrations. Thus, environmental vibrations captured by Pacinian corpuscles of the body are encoded in the auditory midbrain to mediate behavior.