Sensory experience during a critical period alters sensory cortical responses and organization. We find that the earliest sound driven activity in the mouse auditory cortex (ACX) starts before ear-canal opening (ECO). Effects of auditory experience before ECO on ACX development are unknown. We find that mouse ACX subplate neurons (SPNs), crucial in thalamocortical maturation, respond to sounds before ECO showing oddball selectivity. Before ECO, SPNs are more selective to oddball sounds in auditory streams than thalamo-recipient layer 4 (L4) neurons and not after ECO. We hypothesize that SPNs′ oddball selectivity can direct development of L4 responses before ECO. Exposing mice before ECO with a rarely occurring tone in a stream of another tone occurring frequently leads to the strengthening of the adult cortical representation of the rare tone, but not that of the frequent tone. Results of control exposure experiments at multiple developmental windows and also with only a single tone corroborate the observations. A computational network model of known thalamic inputs to SPNs and L4 explains the observed developmental plasticity. Information-theoretic analysis with sparse coding assumptions also predicts the observations. Thus, salient low probability sounds in the earliest auditory environment cause long term changes in the ACX.

中文翻译：

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最早经历过相对罕见但不频繁的声音会引起成年听觉皮层的长期变化8

关键时期的感觉体验会改变感觉皮层反应和组织。我们发现，最早的声音驱动的活动在小鼠听觉皮层（ACX）在耳道开放（ECO）之前开始。ECO之前听觉经验对ACX发育的影响尚不清楚。我们发现，在丘脑皮质成熟中至关重要的小鼠ACX板下神经元（SPN）对ECO之前显示奇异球选择性的声音做出反应。在ECO之前，SPN对听觉流中的奇异球声音的选择比对丘脑受体第4层（L4）神经元的选择性更高，而不是在ECO之后。我们假设SPNs的奇数球选择性可以指导ECO之前L4反应的发展。在ECO之前以很少出现的语气暴露于另一种语气流中的小鼠经常会导致这种稀有语气的成年皮层表现增强，但不是频繁的语气。在多个发育窗口以及仅以一个音调进行的对照暴露实验的结果证实了这一观察结果。SPN和L4的已知丘脑输入的计算网络模型解释了观察到的发育可塑性。具有稀疏编码假设的信息理论分析也可以预测观察结果。因此，在最早的听觉环境中，明显的低概率声音会引起ACX的长期变化。具有稀疏编码假设的信息理论分析也可以预测观察结果。因此，在最早的听觉环境中，明显的低概率声音会引起ACX的长期变化。具有稀疏编码假设的信息理论分析也可以预测观察结果。因此，在最早的听觉环境中，明显的低概率声音会引起ACX的长期变化。