Cortical development is an active field of study. The gerbil provides an excellent model for research because at the moment of birth its brain is rather immature, anatomically and functionally. Furthermore, the gerbil auditory cortex is particularly amenable to investigation in that the gerbil’s onset of hearing occurs approximately after 14 days of postnatal life. Despite these advantages of t...

Optical imaging studies have recently revealed the presence of multiple auditory cortical regions in the mouse brain. We have previously demonstrated, using flavoprotein fluorescence imaging, at least six regions in the mouse auditory cortex, including the anterior auditory field (AAF), primary auditory cortex (AI), the secondary auditory field (AII), dorsoanterior field (DA), dorsomedial field...

The human auditory cortex is engaged in monitoring the speech of interlocutors as well as self-generated speech. During vocalization, auditory cortex activity is reported to be suppressed, an effect often attributed to the influence of an efference copy from motor cortex. Single-unit studies in non-human primates have demonstrated a rich dynamic range of single-trial auditory responses to self-...

To investigate neural plasticity resulting from early auditory deprivation and use of American Sign Language, we measured responses to visual stimuli in deaf signers, hearing signers, and hearing nonsigners using functional magnetic resonance imaging. We examined "compensatory hypertrophy" (changes in the responsivity/size of visual cortical areas) and "cross-modal plasticity" (changes in audit...

While strong activation of auditory cortex is generally found for exogenous orienting of attention, endogenous, intra-modal shifting of auditory attention has not yet been demonstrated to evoke transient activation of the auditory cortex. Here, we used fMRI to test if endogenous shifting of attention is also associated with transient activation of the auditory cortex. In contrast to previous st...