Redwood Neuroscience
Title: “Spectrotemporal Structure and Plasticity of Receptive
Fields in Auditory Cortex”
Jennifer
F. Linden
Abstract:
The role of auditory cortex in
perception and learning of complex sounds is still poorly understood. How is auditory information represented in
different areas of cortex, and how are these representations affected by
auditory learning? As a first step
toward answering these questions, I will discuss the spectrotemporal
structure and plasticity of receptive fields in rodent auditory cortex. Extracellular
recordings were obtained from auditory cortex of anesthetized mice and rats
during presentations of spectrally rich, temporally dynamic sound stimuli. Spectrotemporal
receptive fields (STRFs) derived from neural
responses to the complex stimuli revealed subtle differences in STRF properties
between two early auditory cortical areas, and indicated that a subpopulation
of neurons in these areas had STRF structure suggesting neuronal sensitivity to
complex sounds. Moreover, studies in
animals trained to discriminate complex sounds demonstrated that STRFs in primary auditory cortex became more spectrotemporally complex after training, implying that
experience in adulthood can facilitate early cortical processing of complex
sounds.