Acute and Long-Term Circuit-Level Effects in the Auditory Cortex After Sound Trauma

Harmful environmental sounds are a prevailing source of chronic hearing impairments, including noise induced hearing loss, hyperacusis, or tinnitus. How these symptoms are related to pathophysiological damage to the sensory receptor epithelia and its effects along the auditory pathway, have been documented in numerous studies. An open question concerns the temporal evolution of maladaptive changes after damage and their manifestation in the balance of thalamocortical and corticocortical input to the auditory cortex (ACx). To address these issues, we investigated the loci of plastic reorganizations across the tonotopic axis of the auditory cortex of male Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) acutely after a sound trauma and after several weeks. We used a residual current-source density analysis to dissociate adaptations of intracolumnar input and horizontally relayed corticocortical input to synaptic populations across cortical layers in ACx. A pure tone-based sound trauma caused acute changes of subcortical inputs and corticocortical inputs at all tonotopic regions, particularly showing a broad reduction of tone-evoked inputs at tonotopic regions around the trauma frequency. At other cortical sites, the overall columnar activity acutely decreased, while relative contributions of lateral corticocortical inputs increased. After 4–6 weeks, cortical activity in response to the altered sensory inputs showed a general increase of local thalamocortical input reaching levels higher than before the trauma. Hence, our results suggest a detailed mechanism for overcompensation of altered frequency input in the auditory cortex that relies on a changing balance of thalamocortical and intracortical input and along the frequency gradient of the cortical tonotopic map.