Rapid Spectrotemporal Plasticity in Primary Auditory Cortex during Behavior

Complex natural and environmental sounds, such as speech and music, convey information along both spectral and temporal dimensions. The cortical representation of such stimuli rapidly adapts when animals become actively engaged in discriminating them. In this study, we examine the nature of these changes using simplified spectrotemporal versions (upward vs downward shifting tone sequences) with domestic ferrets (Mustela putorius). Cortical processing rapidly adapted to enhance the contrast between the two discriminated stimulus categories, by changing spectrotemporal receptive field properties to encode both the spectral and temporal structure of the tone sequences. Furthermore, the valence of the changes was closely linked to the task reward structure: stimuli associated with negative reward became enhanced relative to those associated with positive reward. These task- and-stimulus-related spectrotemporal receptive field changes occurred only in trained animals during, and immediately following, behavior. This plasticity was independently confirmed by parallel changes in a directionality function measured from the responses to the transition of tone sequences during task performance. The results demonstrate that induced patterns of rapid plasticity reflect closely the spectrotemporal structure of the task stimuli, thus extending the functional relevance of rapid task-related plasticity to the perception and learning of natural sounds such speech and animal vocalizations.