Experience-Dependent Plasticity and Auditory Cortex

Throughout their lifetimes, individuals are constantly engaged by acoustic environments that leave lasting impressions, such as the sound of a familiar voice or the rhythm of a catchy tune. A fundamental question in auditory neuroscience concerns how and where such acoustic knowledge is acquired and stored in the brain. Such declarative forms of memory, including episodic memories from personal experience, are usually believed to rely on hippocampal and amygdalar processing, but a growing literature has also implicated plasticity within auditory cortex as one of the key contributors to establishing long-term auditory memories. Indeed, the fact that electrophysiological activity within auditory cortex can change as a result of auditory experience has been known since Galambos et al. (1956) first demonstrated pronounced effects on the sound-evoked electroencephalogram after sound–shock pairing. Research since then has attempted to uncover the precise rules and roles for such plasticity in both auditory learning and memory.