While the comprehensive animal literature on auditory cortex plasticity Selleckchem Z-VAD-FMK in response to conditioning (for a review see, e.g., Weinberger 2004) predominantly suggests increased activity or re-mapping of receptive fields in auditory cortex to occur in response to the CS+, but not to the CS−, we here report an effect of increased CS− processing in a left hemispheric region. This raises the question regarding the underlying neural mechanisms mediating this result pattern in humans. We consider auditory cortex plasticity in conjunction with top-down modulation by higher cognitive cortex structures as the target mechanisms through

which the human brain accomplishes the rapid and highly resolving differentiation of multiple complex stimuli after sparse affective associative learning. Associative learning is thought to induce short-term plasticity in sensory cortex, as has been shown in many studies on humans and animals (e.g. Edeline et al., 1993; Weinberger, 2004; Ohl and Scheich, 2005; Stolarova et al., selleck kinase inhibitor 2006; Fritz et al., 2007; Keil et al., 2007). The primary auditory cortex not only analyses stimulus features but has been directly implicated

in the storage of specific information about auditory experiences, amongst others the behavioural relevance of auditory input (Weinberger, 2004). In addition, Fritz et al. (2007) suggested that receptive fields in primary auditory cortex might be dynamically reshaped until in accord to salient target features and task demands by means of top-down signals adjusting attentional filters. In the previous paragraph we discussed the hemispheric asymmetries of preferential CS+ and CS− processing. Based on this discussion it seems reasonable that, depending on the hemisphere,

either the CS+ or the CS− represent salient targets which receive amplified processing driven by such attentional top-down filter functions (as suggested by Fritz et al., 2007). In contrast to our hypothesis, the earlier P20–50m component did not show any significant modulation by differential affective relevance of shock-conditioned as compared to unpaired tones. While previous MultiCS conditioning studies in vision (Steinberg et al., 2012b) and audition (Bröckelmann et al., 2011), corroborated by studies using more traditional single-CS conditioning paradigms (Stolarova et al., 2006; Keil et al., 2007; Kluge et al., 2011), have delivered evidence for extremely rapid affect-specific modulation on initial cortical processing stages (i.e. the visual C1 component between 60 and 90 ms and the auditory P20–50 m from 20 to 50 ms), we here failed to show differential CS+ and CS− processing on earliest cortical responses. King & Nelken (2009) suggested that the primary auditory cortex, which is considered a major generator of the N1 component (e.g. Wood et al.