Editing Inferior colliculus (section)

=== Function ===
The majority of the ascending fibers from the lateral lemniscus project to IC, which means major ascending auditory pathways converge here. IC appears as an integrative station and switchboard as well. It is involved in the integration and routing of multi-modal sensory perception, mainly the [[startle response]] and [[vestibulo-ocular reflex]]. It is also responsive to specific amplitude modulation frequencies and this might be responsible for detection of pitch. In addition, spatial localization by binaural hearing is a related function of IC as well.

The inferior colliculus has a relatively high metabolism in the brain. The Conrad Simon Memorial Research Initiative measured the blood flow of the IC and put a number at 1.80 cc/g/min in the cat brain. For reference, the runner up in the included measurements was the somatosensory cortex at 1.53. This indicates that the inferior colliculus is metabolically more active than many other parts of the brain. The hippocampus, normally considered to use up a disproportionate amount of energy, was not measured or compared.<ref>Conrad Simon Memorial Research Initiative homepage. http://www.conradsimon.org/InferiorColliculus.shtml. MIME type: application/octet-stream.</ref>

Skottun ''et al.'' measured the [[interaural time difference]] sensitivity of single neurons in the inferior colliculus, and used these to predict behavioural performance. The predicted [[Just-noticeable difference|just noticeable difference]] was comparable to that achieved by humans in behavioral tests.<ref>Skottun, Bernt C. ''et al.'': ''The ability of inferior colliculus neurons to signal differences in interaural delay.'' PNAS November 20, 2001  vol. 98, no. 24, pp. 14050-14054.</ref> This suggested that by the level of the inferior colliculus, integration of information over multiple neurons is unnecessary (see [[population code]]).

Axiomatically determined functional models of spectro-temporal receptive fields in inferior colliculus have been determined by Lindeberg and Friberg  <ref name=LinFri15PONE>[https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0119032 T. Lindeberg and A. Friberg "Idealized computational models of auditory receptive fields", PLOS ONE, 10(3): e0119032, pages 1-58, 2015]</ref> in terms of derivatives of Gaussian functions over the log-spectral domain and either Gaussian kernels over time in the case of non-causal time or first-order integrators (truncated exponential kernels) coupled in cascade in the case of truly time-causal operations, optionally in combination with local glissando transformations to account for variations in frequencies over time.
The shapes of the receptive field functions in these models can be determined by necessity from structural properties of the environment combined with requirements about the internal structure of the auditory system to enable theoretically well-founded processing of sound signals at different temporal and log-spectral scales. Thereby, the receptive fields in inferior colliculus can be seen as well adapted to handling natural sound transformations.