Title: Influence of early experience on sensory and non-sensory processing. Abstract: Even a transient period of hearing loss can induce deficits in auditory perception and aural communication skills, when it occurs during childhood. One explanation for this is that developmental hearing loss causes irreversible changes to the developing nervous system, thereby degrading central auditory processing. I will present evidence showing that hearing loss-induced impairments to auditory perception and neural encoding are associated with synaptic and biophysical changes within auditory cortex that persist into adulthood. We have also found that developmental hearing loss is a risk factor for delayed learning on auditory tasks. One plausible basis for learning deficits is that hearing loss causes long-lasting impairments to brain areas downstream of auditory cortex that are commonly associated with cognitive abilities. In fact, following hearing loss, synaptic transmission fails to develop properly in auditory striatum, a downstream target of auditory cortex that is associated with reward learning. Taken together, our results suggest that a period of developmental hearing loss can derail both sensory and non-sensory neural mechanisms, providing an explanation for the barriers to auditory perception or learning that can persist long after normal audibility is restored.