Encoding of Learned Importance of Sound by Magnitude of Representational Area in Primary Auditory Cortex

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 102; no. 38; pp. 13664 - 13669
• Main Authors: Rutkowski, Richard G., Weinberger, Norman M., McGaugh, James L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States National Academy of Sciences 20.09.2005; National Acad Sciences
• Subjects: Acoustic Stimulation - methods; Animal training; Animals; Auditory cortex; Auditory Cortex - physiology; Auditory Perception - physiology; Aural learning; Behavior; Behavioral neuroscience; Biological Sciences; Brain Mapping - methods; Conditioning (Psychology) - physiology; Ears & hearing; Electrophysiology; Laboratory animals; Learning; Male; Memory; Mental stimulation; Neurology; Psychoacoustics; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley; Somatosensory cortex; Sound; Training

We hypothesized that learning-induced representational expansion in the primary auditory cortex (AI) directly encodes the degree of behavioral importance of a sound. Rats trained on an operant auditory conditioning task were variably motivated to the conditioned stimulus (CS) through different level...