Spectro-Temporal Plasticity in Primary Auditory Cortex

项目摘要 听觉体验可以重塑大脑皮质图并改变神经元的感受场特性。 成年动物的听觉皮质。这种可塑性的确切形式取决于行为背景，而 显著声刺激的频谱时间特征。这一点已经从生理和心理的结合上得到了证明 我们以前的实验中的行为方法，其中光谱时间感受野(STRF)是 与动物的行为同时快速而全面地表征。这些实验还包括 在不同的听觉任务中，使用不同的声音信号对比单个细胞的可塑性 受控的光谱和时间特征。这些结果与适应性可塑性的发现是一致的 运动和其他感觉系统，并支持听觉皮质细胞可能经历快速， 动物在不同听觉环境中感受野特性的上下文相关变化 行为任务。这种可塑性很可能涉及到对潜在的 大脑皮层回路，以塑造完成当前听觉任务的最有效的接受场。在.期间 在过去的5年里，我们探索了这种可塑性是如何在雪貂的dpeg和vpr领域表现出来的。 听觉皮质。在这一赠款期间，我们希望完成对这种可塑性的描述，还 考察它在两个重要的认知功能中的作用：序列的分类和编码。我们会 也可以用密集的平面和层状多电极阵列进行生理实验 作为功能超声成像，以获得在期间和之后神经元活动的全球分布的视图 训练这些实验将有助于理解扩展神经元内的相互作用。 网络复盖了雪貂的大部分听觉后部皮质区域，这导致了适应性可塑性。

Project Summary Auditory experience can reshape cortical maps and transform receptive field properties of neurons in the auditory cortex of the adult animal. The exact form of this plasticity depends on the behavioral context, and the spectrotemporal features of the salient acoustic stimuli. This has been shown by combined physiological and behavioral approaches in our previous experiments in which spectrotemporal receptive fields (STRFs) were rapidly and comprehensively characterized simultaneous with the animal behavior. The experiments also contrasted plasticity in single cells across different auditory tasks employing various acoustic signals with controlled spectral and temporal features. These results are consistent with findings of adaptive plasticity in the motor and other sensory systems and support the hypothesis that auditory cortical cells may undergo rapid, context-dependent changes of their receptive field properties when an animal is engaged in different auditory behavioral tasks. This kind of plasticity would likely involve a selective functional reshaping of the underlying cortical circuitry to sculpt the most effective receptive field for accomplishing the current auditory task. During the last 5 years, we explored how this plasticity manifested itself in the dPEG and VPr fields of the ferret auditory cortex. In this grant period, we hope to complete the characterization of this plasticity and also examine its role in two important cognitive functions: Categorization and Encoding of Sequences. We shall conduct our physiological experiments with dense arrays of planar and laminar multielectrode arrays, as well as functional Ultrasound imaging to gain a view of the global distribution of neuronal activity during and after training These experiments will lead to progress in understanding the interactions within an extended neuronal network covering most of the auditory posterior cortical fields in the ferret which give rise to adaptive plasticity.