• Nayan Chanauria, Vishal Bharmauria, Lyes Bachatene, Sarah Cattan, Jean Rouat, and Stéphane Molotchnikoff.
• Neurophysiology of Visual System, Département de Sciences Biologiques, Université de Montréal, CP 6128 Succursale Centre-Ville, Montréal, QC H3C 3J7, Canada.
• Neuroscience. 2019 Apr 15; 404: 48-61.

AbstractIn the cortex, demarcated unimodal sensory regions often respond to unforeseen sensory stimuli and exhibit plasticity. The goal of the current investigation was to test evoked responses of primary visual cortex (V1) neurons when an adapting auditory stimulus is applied in isolation. Using extracellular recordings in anesthetized cats, we demonstrate that, unlike the prevailing observation of only slight modulations in the firing rates of the neurons, sound imposition in isolation entirely shifted the peaks of orientation tuning curves of neurons in both supra- and infragranular layers of V1. Our results suggest that neurons specific to either layer dynamically integrate features of sound and modify the organization of the orientation map of V1. Intriguingly, these experiments present novel findings that the mere presentation of a prolonged auditory stimulus may drastically recalibrate the tuning properties of the visual neurons and highlight the phenomenal neuroplasticity of V1 neurons.Copyright © 2019 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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