Tuning shifts of the auditory system by corticocortical and corticofugal projections and conditioning

► Electric stimulation and conditioning each evoke tone-specific plasticity. ► Pseudo-conditioning evokes nonspecific plasticity of auditory neurons. ► Neural mechanisms for the two types of plasticity are quite different. ► Specialization of the auditory system for plasticity is due to enhanced inhibition. ► A differential gating mechanism exists for auditory signal processing.