Publication

More than the end: OFF response plasticity as a mnemonic signature of a sound’s behavioral salience

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Last modified
  • 06/25/2025
Type of Material
Authors
    Dakshitha B Anandakumar, Emory UniversityRobert Liu, Emory University
Language
  • English
Date
  • 2022-09-06
Publisher
  • Frontiers Media
Publication Version
Copyright Statement
  • © 2022 Anandakumar and Liu.
License
Final Published Version (URL)
Title of Journal or Parent Work
Volume
  • 16
Grant/Funding Information
  • We thank NIH NIDCD R01DC008343 (RL) for funding.
Abstract
  • In studying how neural populations in sensory cortex code dynamically varying stimuli to guide behavior, the role of spiking after stimuli have ended has been underappreciated. This is despite growing evidence that such activity can be tuned, experience-and context-dependent and necessary for sensory decisions that play out on a slower timescale. Here we review recent studies, focusing on the auditory modality, demonstrating that this so-called OFF activity can have a more complex temporal structure than the purely phasic firing that has often been interpreted as just marking the end of stimuli. While diverse and still incompletely understood mechanisms are likely involved in generating phasic and tonic OFF firing, more studies point to the continuing post-stimulus activity serving a short-term, stimulus-specific mnemonic function that is enhanced when the stimuli are particularly salient. We summarize these results with a conceptual model highlighting how more neurons within the auditory cortical population fire for longer duration after a sound’s termination during an active behavior and can continue to do so even while passively listening to behaviorally salient stimuli. Overall, these studies increasingly suggest that tonic auditory cortical OFF activity holds an echoic memory of specific, salient sounds to guide behavioral decisions.
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Research Categories
  • Engineering, Biomedical

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