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Criticisms of 'Specific long-term memory traces in primary auditory cortex'

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 5, page 1 (2004)Cite this article

A Correspondence to this article was published on 01 December 2004

Sirs

These comments relate to the recent review by Weinberger1. In the big brown bat, 'tone-specific' best frequency (BF) shifts in the auditory cortex (AC) and the inferior colliculus are evoked by neither acoustic stimulation (CS) alone, nor leg-stimulation (US) alone, but by paired stimulation (CS–US), that is, by auditory fear conditioning. Backward conditioning (US–CS) does not evoke these BF shifts. The BF shifts are specific to the frequency of the conditioned tone (the CS). Unlike the collicular BF shift, the cortical BF shift increases and reaches a plateau after the termination of conditioning. This plateau is sustained for a long period of time2,3,4. This long-term cortical BF shift is elicited by an increase in cortical acetylcholine3,4,5. Therefore, the cortical BF shift represents physiological associative memory.

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  1. Department of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis, 63130, Missouri, USA

    Nobuo Suga, Weiqing Ji & Xiaofeng Ma

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  1. Nobuo Suga
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  2. Weiqing Ji
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Suga, N., Ji, W. & Ma, X. Criticisms of 'Specific long-term memory traces in primary auditory cortex'. Nat Rev Neurosci 5, 1 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1366-c3

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