Figure 4.

Biasing auditory cortical responses in favor of the target through stimulus-specific adaptation improves animal performance. A, Stimulus-specific adaptation in the eLFP population response of A1 for 8T4D (left) and 16T8D (right). Insets, Mean waveforms, averaged over all recording sessions and channels for a representative implant (rat12; left hemisphere; 7 recording sessions), of eLFP responses driven by the first target and the first distractor tone following the binaural adaptor sequence. Waveforms are overlaid to illustrate how the target and distractor eLFP amplitudes change with respect to each other in the different adaptation conditions. Adapting the target favors the distractor response; adapting the distractor favors the target response. Box plots show eLFP response amplitude distributions in behaving animals (31 recording sessions in 3 rats). Each data point corresponds to the mean eLFP response of one channel in one recording session (or several consecutive sessions; see Materials and Methods). Differences in population response amplitudes for the target and distractor are significant in all stimulus/adaptation configurations (Wilcoxon signed rank test; **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001; n = 150 for 8T4D Target Adapted; n = 141 for 8T4D Distractor Adapted; n = 126 for 16T8D Target Adapted; n = 121 for 16T8D Distractor Adapted). B, Distributions of mean animal performance in individual sessions for 8T4D (left; 24 recording sessions) and 16T8D (right; 25 recording sessions). Just as the target eLFP response is strongest when the distractor is adapted, animal performance is best when the distractor is adapted (right box plots in both panels; Wilcoxon signed rank test, ***p < 0.001).