Largely, it does not. Tomáš Hromádka in Tony Zador’s lab at Cold Spring Harbor patched a collection of neurons in the first bit of auditory cortex (A1) in awake rats and found most of them were silent most of the time.6 And silent regardless of whether the animal was sitting quietly or listening to an extremely dull collection of pure tones. Playing sounds to the bit of the cortex that cares most about sounds evoked very little response. Dan O’Connor, then in Karel Svoboda’s lab at Janelia Farm, patched a collection of neurons in that specialized whisker bit of cortex in mice, mice that were
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