Role of cortical neurodynamics for understanding the neural basis of motivated behavior - lessons from auditory category learning

•Separable conceptualizations of auditory cortex functions are reviewed.•Category formation allows dissociation of stimulus and meaning representations.•Specific patterns of coordinated cortical activity mediate category formation.•Auditory cortex dopamine boosts a cortico-efferent positive feedback circuit.

Rhythmic activity appears in the auditory cortex in both microscopic and macroscopic observables and is modulated by both bottom-up and top-down processes. How this activity serves both types of processes is largely unknown. Here we review studies that have recently improved our understanding of potential functional roles of large-scale global dynamic activity patterns in auditory cortex. The experimental paradigm of auditory category learning allowed critical testing of the hypothesis that global auditory cortical activity states are associated with endogenous cognitive states mediating the meaning associated with an acoustic stimulus rather than with activity states that merely represent the stimulus for further processing.