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Auditory Training Reverses Lead (Pb)-Toxicity-Induced Changes in Sound-Azimuth Selectivity of Cortical Neurons
- Source :
- Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991). 29(8)
- Publication Year :
- 2018
-
Abstract
- Lead (Pb) causes significant adverse effects on the developing brain, resulting in cognitive and learning disabilities in children. The process by which lead produces these negative changes is largely unknown. The fact that children with these syndromes also show deficits in central auditory processing, however, indicates a speculative but disturbing relationship between lead-exposure, impaired auditory processing, and behavioral dysfunction. Here we studied in rats the changes in cortical spatial tuning impacted by early lead-exposure and their potential restoration to normal by auditory training. We found animals that were exposed to lead early in life displayed significant behavioral impairments compared with naïve controls while conducting the sound-azimuth discrimination task. Lead-exposure also degraded the sound-azimuth selectivity of neurons in the primary auditory cortex. Subsequent sound-azimuth discrimination training, however, restored to nearly normal the lead-degraded cortical azimuth selectivity. This reversal of cortical spatial fidelity was paralleled by changes in cortical expression of certain excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitter receptor subunits. These results in a rodent model demonstrate the persisting neurotoxic effects of early lead-exposure on behavioral and cortical neuronal processing of spatial information of sound. They also indicate that attention-demanding auditory training may remediate lead-induced cortical neurological deficits even after these deficits have occurred.
- Subjects :
- Lead Poisoning, Nervous System, Childhood
Cognitive Neuroscience
Auditory cortex
Receptors, N-Methyl-D-Aspartate
050105 experimental psychology
03 medical and health sciences
Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
0302 clinical medicine
Discrimination, Psychological
Medicine
Animals
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Sound Localization
Lead (electronics)
Auditory Cortex
Neurons
business.industry
05 social sciences
Pb toxicity
Cognition
Rodent model
Cortical neurons
Inhibitory neurotransmitter
Receptors, GABA-A
Rats
Disease Models, Animal
Sound
Lead
Excitatory postsynaptic potential
business
Neuroscience
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 14602199
- Volume :
- 29
- Issue :
- 8
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....3841c92e0c93a75d8484e2d11bfbfb18