Dataset Information

Auditory Cortical Plasticity Dependent on Environmental Noise Statistics.

ABSTRACT: During critical periods, neural circuits develop to form receptive fields that adapt to the sensory environment and enable optimal performance of relevant tasks. We hypothesized that early exposure to background noise can improve signal-in-noise processing, and the resulting receptive field plasticity in the primary auditory cortex can reveal functional principles guiding that important task. We raised rat pups in different spectro-temporal noise statistics during their auditory critical period. As adults, they showed enhanced behavioral performance in detecting vocalizations in noise. Concomitantly, encoding of vocalizations in noise in the primary auditory cortex improves with noise-rearing. Significantly, spectro-temporal modulation plasticity shifts cortical preferences away from the exposed noise statistics, thus reducing noise interference with the foreground sound representation. Auditory cortical plasticity shapes receptive field preferences to optimally extract foreground information in noisy environments during noise-rearing. Early noise exposure induces cortical circuits to implement efficient coding in the joint spectral and temporal modulation domain.

SUBMITTER: Homma NY

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7326484 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Auditory Cortical Plasticity Dependent on Environmental Noise Statistics.

Homma Natsumi Y NY Hullett Patrick W PW Atencio Craig A CA Schreiner Christoph E CE

Cell reports 20200301 13

During critical periods, neural circuits develop to form receptive fields that adapt to the sensory environment and enable optimal performance of relevant tasks. We hypothesized that early exposure to background noise can improve signal-in-noise processing, and the resulting receptive field plasticity in the primary auditory cortex can reveal functional principles guiding that important task. We raised rat pups in different spectro-temporal noise statistics during their auditory critical period. ...[more]

PMID: 32234479

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Project description:To navigate complex acoustic environments, listeners adapt neural processes to focus on behaviorally relevant sounds in the acoustic foreground while minimizing the impact of distractors in the background, an ability referred to as top-down selective attention. Particularly striking examples of attention-driven plasticity have been reported in primary auditory cortex via dynamic reshaping of spectro-temporal receptive fields (STRFs). By enhancing the neural response to features of the foreground while suppressing those to the background, STRFs can act as adaptive contrast matched filters that directly contribute to an improved cognitive segregation between behaviorally relevant and irrelevant sounds. In this study, we propose a novel discriminative framework for modeling attention-driven plasticity of STRFs in primary auditory cortex. The model describes a general strategy for cortical plasticity via an optimization that maximizes discriminability between the foreground and distractors while maintaining a degree of stability in the cortical representation. The first instantiation of the model describes a form of feature-based attention and yields STRF adaptation patterns consistent with a contrast matched filter previously reported in neurophysiological studies. An extension of the model captures a form of object-based attention, where top-down signals act on an abstracted representation of the sensory input characterized in the modulation domain. The object-based model makes explicit predictions in line with limited neurophysiological data currently available but can be readily evaluated experimentally. Finally, we draw parallels between the model and anatomical circuits reported to be engaged during active attention. The proposed model strongly suggests an interpretation of attention-driven plasticity as a discriminative adaptation operating at the level of sensory cortex, in line with similar strategies previously described across different sensory modalities.

Dataset Information

Auditory Cortical Plasticity Dependent on Environmental Noise Statistics.

Publications

Auditory Cortical Plasticity Dependent on Environmental Noise Statistics.

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