Figure 5: Cortical area of representational gain is reduced by extinction training. Animals were trained as above. The effects of extinction (withdrawal of reward) on memory strength were the loss of area previously gained during acquisition. Level of extinction learning was estimated by amount of “spontaneous recovery” (after 24 h rest period): the smaller the recovery, the strong the extinction. Thus, ARP can both increase and decrease cortical area as a function of the current behavioral importance of a sound, i.e., its ability to predict reward. Figure modified from [29].