Enhancement of short-term learning and plasticity by long-term

training is an intriguing possibility that has great potential as an enhancing factor for applications of training protocols. These findings bear some conceptual resemblance to findings of increased plasticity on the cellular level due to pretreatment or previous learning or excitation history of the neurons involved, an effect termed metaplasticity to indicate that the rate of plasticity is altered on a higher-order level (Abraham, 2008; Abraham and Bear, 1996). While the concept of metaplasticity stems from cellular and molecular phenomena such as long-term potentiation (e.g., Huang et al., 1992), it has also been applied to explain features of experience-dependent plasticity in visual cortex (Bienenstock et al., 1982), and it can DAPT supplier also explain enhanced short-term plastic effects due to modulation of the involved networks by previous sensory experience or learning (Hofer et al., 2006; Zelcer et al., 2006). The framework of musical training offers an excellent CP-690550 datasheet possibility

to explore the potential for metaplastic effects at higher levels of organization in the human brain. However, while the results so far clearly indicate that long- and short-term effects of musical training and other types of short-term plasticity interact and may enhance 3-mercaptopyruvate sulfurtransferase one another, more research is needed to reveal if the enhancement is due to top-down influences such as attention to relevant input, or if the properties of the sensory systems are also altered on lower levels of processing. Although musical training can sometimes be very tedious and frustrating, as every professional musician can certainly confirm, the reward value and positive feedback associated with producing music

might contribute to the observed efficacy of the approach in comparison to other, less rewarding training paradigms. Listening to certain musical passages has been shown to engage the dopaminergic component of the reward system (Blood and Zatorre, 2001; Salimpoor et al., 2011). Therefore, another interesting aspect of musical training is the possible modulation of neuronal plasticity via the reward circuitry, in particular through aminergic systems, whose modulatory effects on cortical plasticity have been shown in animal models and to some extent also in humans (Gu, 2002; Thiel, 2007). For example, Bao et al. (2001) showed in rats that pairing a tone with stimulation of the ventral tegmental area, resulting in dopamine release to projections in the auditory cortex, enhanced responses to this tone and sharpened the neuronal tuning curve in A1 and secondary auditory cortex.