Sensory Experience in Development Balances Excitation and Inhibition to Stabilize Frequency Tuning in Central Auditory Neurons.

The balance between excitation and inhibition is critical in shaping receptive field tuning properties in sensory neurons and, ultimately, in determining how sensory cues are extracted, transformed and interpreted by brain circuits. New findings suggest that developmentally-regulated, experience-dependent changes in intracortical inhibitory networks are key to defining receptive field tuning properties of auditory cortical neurons.