Multiparametric changes in the receptive field of cortical auditory neurons induced by thalamic activation in the...

The functional organization of the sensory cortex is constructed to process sensory information based on experience and learning. Importantly, it is plastic so that it can quickly adapt to environmental changes. Because the thalamus gates all ascending information, it is critical to understand how the thalamocortical system contributes to the plasticity of the sensory cortex. We show here that the neuronal receptive field (RF) in the auditory cortex faithfully tends toward the RF of the electrically stimulated auditory thalamic neurons. We characterized the RF of auditory neurons by measuring the best frequency, minimum threshold, bandwidth, RF area, and averaged response magnitude. All these parameters of the cortical RF showed robust changes toward the values of the parameters of the stimulated thalamic neuron following focal thalamic stimulation. Our data suggest that the thalamocortical system possesses intrinsic mechanisms that underlie the input specificity of learning-induced or experience-dependent cortical plasticity.