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Volume 2 • Issue 4 • 1000e106OtolaryngologyISSN:2161-119X Otolaryngology an open access journal

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Bishop, Otolaryngology 2012, 2:4DOI: 10.4172/2161-119X.1000e106

*Corresponding author: Charles E. Bishop, Au.D, Ph.D.c, Assistant Professor/ Audiologist, Candidate for the Ph.D. in Clinical Health Sciences, Otolaryngology and Communicative Sciences, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, MS, USA, E-mail: cebishop@umc.edu

Received August 23, 2012; Accepted August 24, 2012; Published August 27, 2012

Citation: Bishop CE (2012) Auditory Neuroplasticity: Not what we are Thinking it is. Otolaryngology 2:e106. doi:10.4172/2161-119X.1000e106

Copyright: © 2012 Bishop CE. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Auditory Neuroplasticity: Not what we are Thinking it isCharles E. Bishop*

Otolaryngology and Communicative Sciences, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, MS, USA

Nothing is more frustrating to a productive scientist than the unshakable paradigm! Often, it seems that popular theories are more than justly influenced by politics, economics, the media, or by the mistaken mindset of the scientific community. An example that illustrates this is in the book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, by author Dan Ariely [1]. This work offers an amusing description of one of the many human tendencies, i.e., the tendency toward ownership (chapter 8, The High Price ofOwnership) and how this tendency leads to fallible decision making.Ariely describes several “peculiarities” of ownership, including theone: “the harder we work on something, the more we start feelingabout [it] as our own.” Certainly, we can draw a parallel between thisand what seems to be a persistent problem in science; the more timeresearchers spend forming theories, the more likely they are to becomeattached to them. This is perhaps most evident in fields of study, suchas the neurosciences, where hypothesis testing and theory forming areconstrained by the complexity, delicacy, or absolute mystery, of thesubject at hand.

The articles presented in this special issue, Auditory Neuroplasticity, effectively distill a few of the mysteries related to the difficult study of the neurological processing of sound. Of particular interest, esteemed researcher Norman M. Weinberger, from the Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, University of California, poses a provocative argument that the function of the primary auditory cortex (A1), in humans and animals, is more involved in learning, memory and other complex processes than what is popularly thought. His review article, “Plasticity in the Primary Auditory Cortex, Not What You Think IT IS: Implications for Basic and Clinical Auditory Neuroscience,” is an exemplary thought-piece that resonates with a familiar tone of academic discourse. Here, Dr. Weinberger provides support for his argument with a concise, though not exhaustive, review of the literature. He purports that there is a growing body of evidence that A1 is “deeply involved in ‘cognitive’ functions,” which the author says are attention, learning, memory, concept formation, and problem solving. In fact, Dr. Weinberger suggests that the last twenty years of discovery and elaboration of Associative Representational Plasticity (ARP) in the A1 has produced a “crisis for this standard model.”

The standard model, according to Dr. Weinberger, holds that A1 function is purely (and solely) one of acoustic analyzer, responding selectively to the particular physical parameters of sound. First evidence of this stretches back to the early 20th century and was supposedly confirmed in successive electrophysiological studies, which were performed on anesthetized animals. He says that as “experiments were extended to waking subjects, it became obvious that the fixed relationship between a stimulus parameter and a cortical response was not as rigid as had been assumed.”

So, what did some researchers find when working with non-anesthetized subjects? Essentially, one group, and many who would follow, found an increase in the amplitude of A1 evoked potentials in the cat when a click stimulus was paired with a mild shock, giving way to speculation that A1 plasticity could be altered by anticipation and memory. This, and many similar experiments that followed until the mid-1980s, apparently demonstrated ‘associative neural plasticity’ in the primary auditory cortex (A1), according to Dr. Weinberger. And, here lies the controversy. Simply, we learn from Dr. Weinberger’s argument that the two models of A1 function, the “standard model” and the alternative, which views A1 as having associative representational plasticity, continue on parallel paths, never intersecting. This is disappointing, as integration of these competing models into a single, unified one could arguably lead to a more accurate translation of theory into useful clinical application.

The issues raised in Dr. Weinberger’s article highlight the reality that we must remain willing to sometimes challenge popular beliefs in lieu of new observations. It is my view that open access journals, such as this one, are an important, emerging component of current scientific discourse. This format ensures that new, meritorious studies can be published in a timely manner and openly shared with the community, irrespective of controversy or author pedigree. Open access journals may provide a new avenue in which theories can be more directly challenged and modified.

Reference

1. Ariely D (2008) Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.

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