Attention-related modulation of neuronal synchrony in the auditory cortex of rats during a two-tone discrimination task

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the role of neuronal synchrony and high‑frequency oscillations in perceptual processing within the auditory cortex of awake, behaving rats. I began by characterizing these oscillations in the primary auditory cortex of animals passively listening to tones. After confirming that auditory stimuli reliably induced high‑frequency oscillations, I examined how these oscillations correlated with the perception of simple, meaningful tone patterns. The findings presented here strongly suggest that gamma‑ and high‑gamma–range oscillations are modulated by auditory perception and may play an important role in encoding and processing acoustic information.