Information Transmission in the Auditory Brainstem Figure 5. Response properties of PLN/OL neurons in chinchilla. Data across rows come from the same neuron. Left column (i.e., panels A, D, G and J) shows response area curves for four VCN neurons. Center column exhibits response area curves using vector strength values as a response metric. Right column displays PSTHs obtained from responses to CF tones. Standard deviations of first-spike latencies (sFSL) are next to each PSTH. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0044286.g005 Distortion in the temporal representation provided by high-sync neurons Although information about the stimulus period provided by entrained responses of high-sync neurons (e.g., Fig. 1) is highly accurate and with little variability, the representation of the stimulus waveform provided by neuronal discharges is usually distorted [19]. In fact, previous studies of the representation of the stimulus waveforms using spectral analysis of regular neuronal discharge has revealed a large amount of distortion [20,21,29] in such representation. This is because the entrained response to sinusoidal stimulation contains not only significant amplitude at the stimulus frequency but also at its harmonics—a consequence of the regularity of the time between consecutive neural discharges. PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 9 September 2012 | Volume 7 | Issue 9 | e44286