Model of auditory prediction in the dorsal cochlear nucleus via spike-timing dependent plasticity

This study investigates the learning dynamics of cartwheel cells in the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN). Cartwheel cells are excited by parallel fibers that carry information from various sources, such as auditory stimuli, proprioception and recurrent inputs from higher-order auditory processing. Thus, these cells are thought to be involved in multimodal sensory integration. Extracellular in vivo recordings show that mouse DCN cartwheel cells respond well to auditory stimuli. A model of the DCN is presented that predicts how the auditory response of cartwheel cells adapts to predictable patterns of auditory stimuli. In the model, the spike-timing dependent learning rule at the synapse from parallel fibers onto cartwheel cells explains predictive learning in the response of cartwheel cells to auditory stimuli.