Early Hearing-Impairment Results in Crossmodal Reorganization of Ferret Core Auditory Cortex
Figure 7
Somatosensory receptive field properties of neurons in core auditory cortex of early hearing-impaired ferrets. Part (a) shows that all somatosensory receptive fields included representation of the face and that these often extended into the neck or forelimb/forepaw (FL/FP) regions. Conversely, no somatosensory receptive fields were observed representing the posterior portion of the body (trunk, hindlimb/hindpaw (HL/HP), tail). Part (b) illustrates that the overwhelming majority of somatosensory receptive fields were bilateral (included ipsi- and contralateral body surface) of which 97% occurred in bimodal auditory-somatosensory neurons (black region of bar). In contrast, comparatively few neurons exhibited exclusively contralateral somatosensory receptive fields, most of which (86%; grey region of bar) occurred in unisensory somatosensory neurons.
