Unilateral auditory cortex lesions impair or improve discrimination learning of amplitude modulated sounds, depending on lesion side
Schulze H, Deutscher A, Tziridis K, Scheich H (2014)
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2014
Journal
Book Volume: 9
Pages Range: e87159
Journal Issue: 1
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0087159
Abstract
A fundamental principle of brain organization is bilateral symmetry of structures and functions. For spatial sensory and motor information processing, this organization is generally plausible subserving orientation and coordination of a bilaterally symmetric body. However, breaking of the symmetry principle is often seen for functions that depend on convergent information processing and lateralized output control, e.g. left hemispheric dominance for the linguistic speech system. Conversely, a subtle splitting of functions into hemispheres may occur if peripheral information from symmetric sense organs is partly redundant, e.g. auditory pattern recognition, and therefore allows central conceptualizations of complex stimuli from different feature viewpoints, as demonstrated e.g. for hemispheric analysis of frequency modulations in auditory cortex (AC) of mammals including humans. Here we demonstrate that discrimination learning of rapidly but not of slowly amplitude modulated tones is non-uniformly distributed across both hemispheres: While unilateral ablation of left AC in gerbils leads to impairment of normal discrimination learning of rapid amplitude modulations, right side ablations lead to improvement over normal learning. These results point to a rivalry interaction between both ACs in the intact brain where the right side competes with and weakens learning capability maximally attainable by the dominant left side alone.
Authors with CRIS profile
Holger Schulze
Professur für Experimentelle HNO-Heilkunde
Konstantin Tziridis
Department of Otorhinolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery
Involved external institutions
Germany (DE)How to cite
APA:
Schulze, H., Deutscher, A., Tziridis, K., & Scheich, H. (2014). Unilateral auditory cortex lesions impair or improve discrimination learning of amplitude modulated sounds, depending on lesion side. PLoS ONE, 9(1), e87159. https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087159
MLA:
Schulze, Holger, et al. "Unilateral auditory cortex lesions impair or improve discrimination learning of amplitude modulated sounds, depending on lesion side." PLoS ONE 9.1 (2014): e87159.
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