We investigate how early exposure to different sound environments, including music, non-musical sounds, and silence, impacts sound preferences in adult mice. During critical developmental periods, we expose young mice to specific auditory conditions, such as excerpts from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, and later assess their sound preferences using free-choice tasks.       

Our research has uncovered sex-dependent differences in how music exposure affects sound preference behavior. Male mice tend to strongly prefer environments that match their early auditory experience, while female mice show only a modest reduction in their natural aversion to sound. Additionally, we have found that exposed mice, regardless of the type of exposure, display reduced neural activity in the auditory cortex compared to naive mice. Interestingly, in female mice, there is a strong negative correlation between neural activity and behavior, a pattern absent in male mice (Sehrawat and Nelken, 2024, bioRxiv).

Currently, we are employing fiber photometry to measure the activity of dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) during preference tests. This approach aims to shed light on the VTA’s involvement in sound preferences and to elucidate how sounds experienced during early exposure are processed within this reward-related brain region.