Short-term plasticity of the human auditory cortex

Magnetoencephalographic measurements (MEG) were used to examine the effect on the human auditory cortex of removing specific frequencies from the acou stic environment. Subjects listened for 3 h on three consecutive days to mu sic "notched" by removal of a narrow frequency band centered on 1 kHz. Imme diately after Listening to the notched music, the neural representation for a 1-kHz test stimulus centered on the notch was found to be significantly diminished compared to the neural representation for a 0.5-kHz control stim ulus centered one octave below the region of notching. The diminished neura l representation for 1 Id-it reversed to baseline between the successive li stening sessions. These results suggest that rapid changes can occur in the tuning of neurons in the adult human auditory cortex following manipulatio n of the acoustic environment. A dynamic form of neural plasticity may unde rlie the phenomenon observed here. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B .V. All rights reserved.