Multisensory plasticity in adulthood: cross-modal experience enhances neuronal excitability and exposes silent inputs

Multisensory superior colliculus neurons in cats were found to retain substantial plasticity to short-term, site-specific experience with cross-modal stimuli well into adulthood. Following cross-modal exposure trials, these neurons substantially increased their sensitivity to the cross-modal stimulus configuration as well as to its individual component stimuli. In many cases, the exposure experience also revealed a previously ineffective or "silent" input channel, rendering it overtly responsive. These experience-induced changes required relatively few exposure trials and could be retained for more than 1 h. However, their induction was generally restricted to experience with cross-modal stimuli. Only rarely were they induced by exposure to a modality-specific stimulus and were never induced by stimulating a previously ineffective input channel. This short-term plasticity likely provides substantial benefits to the organism in dealing with ongoing and sequential events that take place at a given location in space and may reflect the ability of multisensory superior colliculus neurons to rapidly alter their response properties to accommodate to changes in environmental challenges and event probabilities.