, 2008). Additionally, development of FM direction selectivity in the rat ACx is influenced

by exposure to FM sweeps (Insanally et al., 2009). An added advantage of studying FM processing is that the underlying circuit and cellular mechanisms have, in part, been worked out (Ye et al., 2010, Pollak et al., 2011 and Fuzessery et al., 2011). The manner in which experience-based plasticity influences perception of communication sounds may provide a unique opportunity to establish the relationship between neural properties and behavior. The acoustic rearing environment of songbirds is rich in complex vocalizations and provides a paradigm to test whether early exposure to natural sounds

can influence http://www.selleckchem.com/products/PD-0332991.html auditory BI 6727 in vitro coding in juveniles and adults. Because juvenile forebrain neurons display weaker selectivity for song and lower responsiveness compared to adults (Amin et al., 2007), it is plausible that auditory coding develops under the influence of song experience. Indeed, early deprivation of song experience results in abnormally large auditory responsive regions in ACx and compromised neural selectivity in groups of neurons recorded simultaneously, as depicted in Figure 7 (Cousillas et al., 2004, Hauber et al., 2007, George et al., 2010 and Maul et al., 2010). For example, the number of physiological recording sites that respond to songs is lower and the response selectivity of recorded sites is higher in European starlings caught

in the wild (and presumably exposed to a rich diversity of songs) than in starlings reared without exposure to adult song (George et al., 2010). A general hypothesis that emerges most from these studies is that normal ACx development in animals that show vocal learning depends on juvenile exposure to adult communication sounds. Songbirds, including juveniles, can be trained to discriminate among complex sounds and to demonstrate their perceptual preferences for sounds by approaching or eliciting the presentation of some sounds over others (Miller, 1979, Dent and Dooling, 2004, Braaten et al., 2006 and Gess et al., 2011). Therefore, one can test for experience-dependent changes in perceptual skills over the course of postnatal development and search for neural coding correlates (Grace et al., 2003, Woolley et al., 2005, Woolley et al., 2010, Hauber et al., 2007, Phan et al., 2006 and Schneider and Woolley, 2010). For example, the role of experience in development of response selectivity for vocalization types in the songbird ACx (e.g., Figure 7) can be examined in parallel with perceptual tests, staggered over ages, to test how perceptual behavior and neural representations of vocal sounds covary with age and experience.