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The optic tectum controls visually guided adaptive plasticity in the owl's auditory space map

Nature volume 415, pages 73–76 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

The midbrain contains an auditory map of space that is shaped by visual experience1,2,3. When barn owls are raised wearing spectacles that horizontally displace the visual field, the auditory space map in the external nucleus of the inferior colliculus (ICX) shifts according to the optical displacement of the prisms4. Topographic visual activity in the optic tectum could serve as the template that instructs the auditory space map5. We studied the effects of a restricted, unilateral lesion in the portion of the optic tectum that represents frontal space. Here we show that such a lesion eliminates adaptive adjustments specifically in the portion of the auditory map that represents frontal space on the same side of the brain, while the rest of the map continues to adjust adaptively. Thus, activity in the tectum calibrates the auditory space map in a location-specific manner. Because the site of adaptive changes is the ICX4,6,7, the results also indicate that the tectum provides a topographic instructive signal that controls adaptive auditory plasticity in the ICX.

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Figure 1: Schematics and representative lesions.
Figure 2: Representative lesion effects on auditory plasticity.
Figure 3: Summary of the effects of tectal lesion on auditory map plasticity.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. Newsome, J. Raymond, S. McConnell, J. Gold, B. Linkenhoker and Y. Gutfreund for comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the March of Dimes and the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD).

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  1. Peter S. Hyde

    Present address: Science Department, Roxbury Latin School, West Roxbury, Massachusetts, 02132, USA

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  1. Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, 94305, California, USA

    Peter S. Hyde & Eric I. Knudsen

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  2. Eric I. Knudsen
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Correspondence to Eric I. Knudsen.

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Hyde, P., Knudsen, E. The optic tectum controls visually guided adaptive plasticity in the owl's auditory space map. Nature 415, 73–76 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/415073a

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