Incremental training increases the plasticity of the auditory space map in adult barn owls

Brie A. Linkenhoker and Eric I. Knudsen ()
Additional contact information
Brie A. Linkenhoker: Stanford University School of Medicine
Eric I. Knudsen: Stanford University School of Medicine

Nature, 2002, vol. 419, issue 6904, 293-296

Abstract: Abstract The plasticity in the central nervous system that underlies learning is generally more restricted in adults than in young animals1,2,3,4. In one well-studied example, the auditory localization pathway has been shown to be far more limited in its capacity to adjust to abnormal experience in adult than in juvenile barn owls5. Plasticity in this pathway has been induced by exposing owls to prismatic spectacles that cause a large, horizontal shift of the visual field. With prisms, juveniles learn new associations between auditory cues, such as interaural time difference (ITD), and locations in visual space, and acquire new neurophysiological maps of ITD in the optic tectum, whereas adults do neither6. Here we show that when the prismatic shift is experienced in small increments, maps of ITD in adults do change adaptively. Once established through incremental training, new ITD maps can be reacquired with a single large prismatic shift. Our results show that there is a substantially greater capacity for plasticity in adults than was previously recognized and highlight a principled strategy for tapping this capacity that could be applied in other areas of the adult central nervous system.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01002 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:419:y:2002:i:6904:d:10.1038_nature01002

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature01002

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().