The Owl's visual and auditory maps in his Optic Tectum essay
Developmental plasticity in the visual and auditory representations in the mammalian superior colliculus. - 1038 332073a0 Google Scholar Knudsen EI 1982. Auditory and visual maps of space in the optic tectum of the owl. J. Neurosci. 2, 1177-1194 PMC free article, Google ScholarThe midbrain contains an auditory map of space formed by visual experience. When barn owls are raised with glasses that shift the visual field horizontally, the auditory space map in the external nucleus of the inferior colliculus ICX shifts according to the optical displacement of the prisms. Topographical visual activity in. The optic tectum OT of barn owls contains topographical maps of auditory and visual space. Barn owls raised with horizontally moving prisms of prisms gain new hearing. Here we investigate a possible anatomical basis for another well-studied example of experience-dependent plasticity, the visual calibration of the auditory space map in the optic tectum OT of the barn owl. Spatial location is represented in the auditory system by neurons tuned to acoustic signals that vary depending on the location of the sound source.