A computational model of the primary auditory cortex exhibiting plasticity in the frequency representation

Many studies have demonstrated that classical conditioning retunes single neurons in the primary auditory cortex (AI). Recent works suggest that this functional plasticity is related to alterations in the area of representation of the conditioned stimulus frequency in AI. In this work, we present a computational model of AI and pre-cortical structures involved with auditory processing (cochlea and medial geniculate body) which reproduces some properties of tonotopic maps in AI. The model is used to simulate a classical conditioning experiment, which causes retuning of certain neurons to the conditioned frequency. This retuning is accompanied by an expansion of the cortical representation area of the conditioned frequency.