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Cognitive neuroscience

Seeing in the sound zone

Nature volume 404, pages 820–821 (2000)Cite this article

How is the development of the processing capabilities and organization of the brain's cerebral cortex controlled? Intrinsic mechanisms (such as genetically encoded developmental programmes) and extrinsic inputs (such as the things we see and hear, and the ways that this information is encoded by specific discharges within particular sensory systems) both have a say. But to what extent can the developmental pathways be overruled by inputs from the outside world? Two fascinating papers by Sur and colleagues, on pages 841 and 871of this issue1,2, provide some of the most compelling evidence yet for the exquisite sensitivity of cortical development to external cues.

How does one even start to determine the relative contributions of external and internal factors to cortical development? Ferrets have proved a useful model animal, in part because they are born before their development has progressed too far. Over the past decade, Sur and co-workers have been perfecting an experimental approach that consists of surgically manipulating the nerves that feed into different parts of the cortex of very young ferrets. Specifically, the nerves from the retina (which normally lead to a subcortical region, the visual thalamus, which in turn feeds into the primary visual cortex, or V1) are redirected to grow into the auditory thalamus (which feeds into the primary auditory cortex, or A1). The auditory thalamus itself is deprived of its normal auditory inputs in this model.

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Figure 1: Rewiring the brain.

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  1. the Keck Center for Integrative Neurosciences and Coleman Center, University of California, 513 Parnassus Avenue, San Francisco, 94143-0732, California, USA

    Michael Merzenich

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  1. Michael Merzenich
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Correspondence to Michael Merzenich.

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Merzenich, M. Seeing in the sound zone. Nature 404, 820–821 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35009174

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