Aging Impairs Temporal Integration in Supragranular but Not Thalamorecipient Layers of Primary Auditory Cortex

Summary Speech has harmonic features and speech perception is impaired in aging. Imaging of auditory cortex (A1) in aged mice shows reduced selectivity to harmonic sounds and impaired temporal integration of component frequencies especially in layers 2/3 but not layer 4, suggesting that age-related changes in intracortical processing contribute to the hearing deficits. Since complex sounds can be decoded from aging A1, paradigms enhancing cortical processing might improve hearing in aging.