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Science 18 April 2003:
Vol. 300. no. 5618, pp. 498 - 502
DOI: 10.1126/science.1082163
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Reports

Environmental Noise Retards Auditory Cortical Development

Edward F. Chang* and Michael M. Merzenich

The mammalian auditory cortex normally undergoes rapid and progressive functional maturation. Here we show that rearing infant rat pups in continuous, moderate-level noise delayed the emergence of adultlike topographic representational order and the refinement of response selectivity in the primary auditory cortex (A1) long beyond normal developmental benchmarks. When those noise-reared adult rats were subsequently exposed to a pulsed pure-tone stimulus, A1 rapidly reorganized, demonstrating that exposure-driven plasticity characteristic of the critical period was still ongoing. These results demonstrate that A1 organization is shaped by a young animal's exposure to salient, structured acoustic inputs—and implicate noise as a risk factor for abnormal child development.

W. M. Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: echang{at}itsa.ucsf.edu

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