title: Experience-dependent plasticity in pitch encoding:  from brainstem to auditory cortex.
abstract: Linguistic and musical pitch provide an analytic window to evaluate how neural representations of important pitch attributes of a sound undergo transformation from early sensory to later cognitive stages of processing in the human brain, and how pitch-relevant experience shapes these representations. These pitch attributes are shaped differentially depending on their functional relevance to a listener. Neural encoding of pitch-relevant information is shaped by the perceptual salience of domain-specific features at subcortical (auditory brainstem) and cortical stages of processing. The emergence of a functional ear asymmetry in the neural encoding of pitch-relevant information at a lower sensory processing level supports the view that local and feedforward and feedback mechanisms are involved in pitch-relevant processing. A theoretical framework for a neural network is proposed involving coordination between local, feedforward, and feedback components that can account for experience-induced enhancement of pitch representations at multiple levels of the auditory pathway.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech Language Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. rkrish@purdue.edu
authors.forename: Ananthanarayan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Krishnan
authors.forename: Jackson Thomas
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Gandour
authors.forename: Gavin M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Bidelman
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000344:Afferent Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D001933:Brain Stem / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D016057:Evoked Potentials, Auditory, Brain Stem; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity / Q000502:physiology*; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D011578:Psycholinguistics