Review abstract
Focus on Hearing
- Focus issue:
- Junember 2009 Volume 12, No 6
Nature Neuroscience 12, 711 - 717 (2009)
Published online: 10 May 2009 | doi:10.1038/nn.2332
Tonotopic reorganization of developing auditory brainstem circuits
Karl Kandler1,2,3, Amanda Clause1,2,3 & Jihyun Noh1,2
Abstract
A fundamental organizing principle of auditory brain circuits is tonotopy, the orderly representation of the sound frequency to which neurons are most sensitive. Tonotopy arises from the coding of frequency along the cochlea and the topographic organization of auditory pathways. The mechanisms that underlie the establishment of tonotopy are poorly understood. In auditory brainstem pathways, topographic precision is present at very early stages in development, which may suggest that synaptic reorganization contributes little to the construction of precise tonotopic maps. Accumulating evidence from several brainstem nuclei, however, is now changing this view by demonstrating that developing auditory brainstem circuits undergo a marked degree of refinement on both a subcellular and circuit level.
- Departments of Otolaryngology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Eye and Ear Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
- Neurobiology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Eye and Ear Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
- Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
Correspondence to: Karl Kandler1,2,3 e-mail: kkarl@pitt.edu
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