QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

HOME  |   SEARCH  |   ARCHIVE  |   SUBSCRIBE  |   CONTACT  |   HELP

The Journal of Neuroscience, March 7, 2007, 27(10):2663-2672; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4844-06.2007

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Supplemental Data Submit an eLetter Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in ISI Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via ISI Web of Science (8) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by van Wassenhove, V. Articles by Nagarajan, S. S. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by van Wassenhove, V. Articles by Nagarajan, S. S.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Auditory Cortical Plasticity in Learning to Discriminate Modulation Rate

Virginie van Wassenhove¹ and Srikantan S. Nagarajan²

¹Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, and ²Department of Radiology, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Srikantan Nagarajan, Biomagnetic Imaging Laboratory, Department of Radiology, Box 0628, 513 Parnassus Avenue, S362, San Francisco, CA 94143-0628. Email: sri{at}radiology.ucsf.edu

The discrimination of temporal information in acoustic inputs is a crucial aspect of auditory perception, yet very few studies have focused on auditory perceptual learning of timing properties and associated plasticity in adult auditory cortex. Here, we trained participants on a temporal discrimination task. The main task used a base stimulus (four tones separated by intervals of 200 ms) that had to be distinguished from a target stimulus (four tones with intervals down to 180 ms). We show that participants' auditory temporal sensitivity improves with a short amount of training (3 d, 1 h/d). Learning to discriminate temporal modulation rates was accompanied by a systematic amplitude increase of the early auditory evoked responses to trained stimuli, as measured by magnetoencephalography. Additionally, learning and auditory cortex plasticity partially generalized to interval discrimination but not to frequency discrimination. Auditory cortex plasticity associated with short-term perceptual learning was manifested as an enhancement of auditory cortical responses to trained acoustic features only in the trained task. Plasticity was also manifested as induced non-phase–locked high gamma-band power increases in inferior frontal cortex during performance in the trained task. Functional plasticity in auditory cortex is here interpreted as the product of bottom-up and top-down modulations.

Key words: auditory cortex; evoked magnetic fields; gamma band; plasticity; learning; time; MEG; synchronization

---

Received July 26, 2006; revised Dec. 20, 2006; accepted Jan. 8, 2007.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Srikantan Nagarajan, Biomagnetic Imaging Laboratory, Department of Radiology, Box 0628, 513 Parnassus Avenue, S362, San Francisco, CA 94143-0628. Email: sri{at}radiology.ucsf.edu

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. de Boer and A. R. D. Thornton Neural Correlates of Perceptual Learning in the Auditory Brainstem: Efferent Activity Predicts and Reflects Improvement at a Speech-in-Noise Discrimination Task J. Neurosci., May 7, 2008; 28(19): 4929 - 4937. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home  |   Search  |   Archive  |   Subscribe  |   Contact  |   Help