Fig. 5: The sex of the animal also influences maturation and plasticity.

a VSD imaging analysis performed in P16 females as described in Fig. 1d. Movie frames (4 ms rate) for Left and Right ACx TC responses; first frame: first movie frame determined to show a significant TC response (see “Methods” section). b (left panel), Cumulative binned depths of responsive locations from the Left and Right ACx in P16 females (blue and red solid lines, respectively) are overlaid on top of P16 males (shown in gray, see Fig. 1e). b (right panel), Centroid of response calculated for the first frame for P16 females and hemisphere groups (color dots) overlaid on male data (in gray). N = 3 mice, n = 2 and 2 slices for Left and Right ACx. c Female mouse pups were exposed to 7 kHz tone pips between P9–12. Between P35–57, bilateral extracellular recordings from the Left and Right ACx were performed under anesthesia using 32-channel, dual-shank silicon probes. d Percentage of putative individual clusters responding to 7 kHz at a given location (Mann–Whitney, p = 0.0039 violin plots), and pie charts showing the fraction of locations with more than 50% of clusters responsive to 7 kHz (Fisher’s exact test p = 0.0281). e The relationship between the brain hemisphere and the responsiveness of individual clusters to 7 kHz tones is statistically significant (solid = responsive, empty = not responsive). The Fisher’s exact test (one-sided) indicates that the Right ACx had more clusters responsive to tones close to 7 kHz compared to the Left, p < 0.0001. Left ACx n = 42 and Right ACx n = 42 total recording locations, from 3 animals. f Anatomical positions of all recording locations organized along the anterior-posterior axis of the ACx. Dashed lines through violin plots depict quartiles. Data are presented as mean values ± SEM; the center of the error bars represents the mean.