Author: Brown Mel Irvine Dexter R.F. Park Valerie N.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISSN: 1460-2199
Source: Cerebral Cortex, Vol.14, Iss.9, 2004-09, pp. : 952-965
Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.
Abstract
The aim of this study was to determine whether auditory perceptual learning is associated with changes in the frequency organization and/or neuronal response properties of primary auditory cortex (AI). Five out of six cats trained on an 8 kHz frequency discrimination task showed improvements in performance that reflected changes in discriminative capacity. Quantitative measures of the response characteristics and frequency organization of AI revealed that the frequency organization of AI in trained cats did not differ from that in controls, but there was a tendency for neurons with a CF immediately above 8 kHz to have slightly broader tuning in the trained cats than in controls, and neurons in one of these bands had significantly shorter latency. These results are in accord with recent reports that cortical topography in primary visual cortex is unchanged in animals trained on visual discrimination tasks, but are at variance with an earlier report of enlarged representations of training frequencies in AI of monkeys trained on a frequency discrimination task. It is concluded that substantial changes in perceptual discriminative capacity can occur without change in primary cortical topography and with only small changes in neuronal response characteristics.
Related content
By Qin Ling Sakai Masashi Chimoto Sohei Sato Yu
Cerebral Cortex, Vol. 15, Iss. 9, 2005-09 ,pp. :
Sequence Sensitivity of Neurons in Cat Primary Auditory Cortex
By Brosch M.
Cerebral Cortex, Vol. 10, Iss. 12, 2000-12 ,pp. :