Top-down modulation of sensory cortex gates perceptual learning
| Autor: | Melissa L. Caras, Dan H. Sanes |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
0301 basic medicine
media_common.quotation_subject education Sensory system Auditory cortex Task (project management) 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Perceptual learning Cortex (anatomy) Perception Parietal Lobe Task Performance and Analysis medicine Animals Learning Active listening Sensory cortex media_common Auditory Cortex Neurons Multidisciplinary Neuronal Plasticity Somatosensory Cortex Biological Sciences 030104 developmental biology medicine.anatomical_structure Auditory Perception Psychology Gerbillinae 030217 neurology & neurosurgery Cognitive psychology |
| Popis: | Practice sharpens our perceptual judgments, a process known as perceptual learning. Although several brain regions and neural mechanisms have been proposed to support perceptual learning, formal tests of causality are lacking. Furthermore, the temporal relationship between neural and behavioral plasticity remains uncertain. To address these issues, we recorded the activity of auditory cortical neurons as gerbils trained on a sound detection task. Training led to improvements in cortical and behavioral sensitivity that were closely matched in terms of magnitude and time course. Surprisingly, the degree of neural improvement was behaviorally gated. During task performance, cortical improvements were large and predicted behavioral outcomes. In contrast, during nontask listening sessions, cortical improvements were weak and uncorrelated with perceptual performance. Targeted reduction of auditory cortical activity during training diminished perceptual learning while leaving psychometric performance largely unaffected. Collectively, our findings suggest that training facilitates perceptual learning by strengthening both bottom-up sensory encoding and top-down modulation of auditory cortex. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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