Cochlear implants (CI) are neuroprostheses that restore hearing for deaf humans by delivering patterned pulses of current to the auditory nerve, bypassing the damaged sensory epithelium of the inner ear. Almost all CI users require adaptation periods to attain speech comprehension, which improves most rapidly in the first weeks to 6 months following CI activation [1]. In CI studies of deafened animals, training induces cortical map plasticity in primary auditory cortex (A1) of task-relevant stimuli [2, 3]. It remains unclear whether observed CI training-induced cortical plasticity in animal models relate to early adaptations in human CI users. To connect human and non-human studies of CI use, our experimental framework focuses on plasticity that may generalize to a broad range of auditory stimuli. First, we developed a 2-alternative forced choice (2AFC) task for sound frequency discrimination in both rats and humans. Rats completed the 2AFC task with high discrimination (d’>1) after 2-3 weeks of acoustic (N=18) or CI training (N=5). Discrimination performance of human CI users (N=2) were similar to rats. Next, we performed whole-cell recordings from rat A1 neurons and measured excitatory and inhibitory postsynaptic currents (E/IPSCs) evoked by CI stimulation in untrained vs trained animals. Synaptic responses were highly irregular and long latency in untrained animals, resulting in poor excitatory-inhibitory correlation; in contrast, animals trained on the 2AFC task had A1 neurons with high excitatory-inhibitory correlation values. Lastly, we performed micro-electrocorticography (µECoG) recordings across A1. Using a supervised linear classifier, we found better classification of acoustic tones than CI stimuli. Chronic µECoG recordings over CI training showed increased heterogeneity in topographical representation of CI-evoked stimuli. Taken together, we have identified potential neural correlates that may underlie more generalized adaptations for improved encoding of CI stimulation following initial activation.