Social interactions involve multi-modal signaling. Here, we study interacting rats to investigate audio-haptic coordination and multisensory integration in the auditory cortex. We find that facial touch is associated with an increased rate of ultrasonic vocalizations, which are emitted at the whisking rate (∼8 Hz) and preferentially initiated in the retraction phase of whisking. In a small subs...

Mammalian cerebral cortex is composed of a multitude of different areas that are each specialized for a unique purpose. It is unclear whether the activity pattern and modality of sensory inputs to cortex play an important role in the development of cortical regionalization. The modality of sensory inputs to cerebral cortex can be altered experimentally. Neonatal diversion of retinal axons to th...

A variety of attention-related effects have been demonstrated in primary auditory cortex (A1). However, an understanding of the functional role of higher auditory cortical areas in guiding attention to acoustic stimuli has been elusive. We recorded from neurons in two tonotopic cortical belt areas in the dorsal posterior ectosylvian gyrus (dPEG) of ferrets trained on a simple auditory discrimin...

Abstract Auditory experience can reshape cortical maps and transform receptive field properties of neurons in the auditory cortex of the adult animal in a manner that depends on the behavioral context and the acoustic features of the stimuli. This has been shown in physiological and behavioral experiments, in which auditory cortical cells underwent rapid, context-dependent changes of their rece...

41 Environmental enrichment induces powerful changes in the adult cerebral cortex. 42 Studies in primary sensory cortex have observed that environmental enrichment 43 modulates neuronal response strength, selectivity, speed of response and 44 synchronization to rapid sensory input. Other reports suggest that non-primary sensory 45 fields are more plastic than primary sensory cortex. The consequ...

Induced oscillatory activity in the auditory cortex peaks at around 40 Hz in humans. Using regional cerebral blood flow and positron emission tomography we previously confirmed frequency-selective cortical responses to 40-Hz tones in auditory primary cortices and concomitant bilateral activation of the cerebellar hemispheres. In this study, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we ...

The role of auditory cortex in sound localization and its recalibration by experience was explored by measuring the accuracy with which ferrets turned toward and approached the source of broadband sounds in the horizontal plane. In one group, large bilateral lesions were made of the middle ectosylvian gyrus, where the primary auditory cortical fields are located, and part of the anterior and/or...

1. Responses of neurons in the auditory cortex of the albino rat were examined using microelectrode mapping techniques. Characteristic frequencies were determined for numerous electrode penetrations across the cortical surface in individual animals. A primary auditory area was identified in the posterolateral neocortex that was characterized by short latency responses to tone bursts and tonotop...