The mammalian sensory neocortex exhibits experience-dependent plasticity such that neurons modify their response properties according to changes in sensory experience. The synaptic plasticity mechanism of long-term potentiation requiring calcium-calmodulin-dependent kinase type II (CaMKII) could underlie experience-dependent plasticity. Plasticity in adult mice can be induced by changes in the ...

OF DISSERTATION DOPAMINERGIC AND ACTIVITY-DEPENDENT MODULATION OF MECHANOSENSORY RESPONSES IN DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER LARVAE. A central theme of this dissertation is nervous system plasticity. Activitydependent plasticity and dopaminergic modulation are two processes by which neural circuits adapt their function to developmental and environmental changes. These processes are involved in basic c...

Motor practice elicits use-dependent plasticity in humans as well as in animals. Given the influence of cholinergic neurotransmission on learning and memory processes, we evaluated the effects of scopolamine (a muscarinic receptor antagonist) on use-dependent plasticity and corticomotor excitability in a double-blind placebo-controlled randomized design study. Use-dependent plasticity was subst...

A finite deformation mechanism-based thermodynamically consistent constitutive framework is presented for describing the dynamic behaviors of brittle materials under impact loading. The developed based upon a multiplicative decomposition gradient in terms multiple mechanisms, including recoverable elasticity, crack-induced damage, and other inelastic mechanisms such as subgrain granular plastic...

Experience-dependent plasticity in the cortex is often higher during short critical periods in postnatal development. The mechanisms limiting adult cortical plasticity are still unclear. Maturation of intracortical GABAergic inhibition is suggested to be crucial for the closure of the critical period for ocular dominance (OD) plasticity in the visual cortex. We find that reduction of GABAergic ...

The term synaptic plasticity points to a series of persistent changes related to the activity of synapses. Long-term potentiation (LTP) is a reflection of synaptic plasticity that has an important role in learning and memory. LTP is a long-lasting increase of synaptic activity due to enhancement of excitatory synaptic transmission after a high-frequency train of electrical stimulations. Differe...

Golgi cells (GoCs) are inhibitory interneurons that influence the cerebellar cortical response to sensory input by regulating the excitability of the granule cell layer. While GoC inhibition is essential for normal motor coordination, little is known about the circuit dynamics that govern the activity of these cells. In particular, although GoC spontaneous spiking influences the extent of inhib...

The pattern of connections among cortical excitatory cells with overlapping arbors is non-random. In particular, correlations among connections produce clustering - cells in cliques connect to each other with high probability, but with lower probability to cells in other spatially intertwined cliques. In this study, we model initially randomly connected sparse recurrent networks of spiking neur...