Brainstem control of vocalization and its coordination with respiration

Phonation critically depends on precise controls of laryngeal muscles in coordination with ongoing respiration. However, the neural circuit mechanisms governing these processes remain unclear. Here, we identified excitatory vocalization-specific laryngeal premotor neurons located in the retroambiguus nucleus (RAmVOC) in adult mice as both necessary and sufficient for driving vocal-cord closure and eliciting mouse ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs). The duration of RAmVOC-activation can determine the lengths of both USV syllables and concurrent expiration periods, with the impact of RAmVOC-activation depending on respiration phases. RAmVOC-neurons receive inhibition from the preBötzinger complex, and inspiration-needs override RAmVOC-mediated-vocal-cord closure. Ablating inhibitory synapses in RAmVOC-neurons compromised this inspiration gating of laryngeal adduction, resulting in discoordination of vocalization with respiration. Our study revealed the hitherto unknown circuits for vocal pro..., , , # Brainstem control of vocalization and its coordination with respiration [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vmcvdnd0m](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vmcvdnd0m) ## Description of the data and file structure # **Brainstem control of vocalization and its coordination with respiration** [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vmcvdnd0m](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vmcvdnd0m) DATA used in this study is shared in this depository. Description of the data and file structure Each jupyter notebook and .jl file has description regarding data and file structure USV stands for Ultrasonic Vocalization ## Folders ### Codes Julia programming codes for data acquisition and analysis used in this study. : for acquisition Nidaq_read.jl, plot_functions.jl : for analysis respiration.jl, usvanalysis.jl, usvdetection.jl, USVpreprocess.jl, usv_temp.jl ### Fig. 1 This folder is empty (nothing shared) ### Fig. 2 #### Fig. 2C * Fig. 2C - RAmVOC - preLMN - AllenCCF.ipynb : jupyter notebook for creating d...