Experience-dependent plasticity, the ability of the brain to constantly adapt to an ever-changing environment, has been suggested to be highest during childhood and to decline thereafter. However, empirical evidence for this is rather scarce. Slow-wave activity (SWA; EEG activity of 1-4.5 Hz) during deep sleep can be used as a marker of experience-dependent plasticity. For example, performing a...

The ocular dominance (OD) shift that occurs in visual cortex after brief monocular deprivation (MD) is a classic model of experience-dependent cortical plasticity. It has been suggested that OD plasticity in layer 2/3 of visual cortex precedes and is necessary for plasticity in the thalamocortical input layer 4. Here, we show in mouse visual cortex that rapid OD plasticity occurs simultaneously...

Critical periods for experience-dependent plasticity have been well characterized within sensory cortex, in which the ability of altered sensory input to drive firing rate changes has been demonstrated across brain areas. Here we show that rapid experience-dependent changes in the strength of excitatory synapses within mouse primary somatosensory cortex exhibit a critical period that is input s...

Functional rehabilitation of the cortex following peripheral or central nervous system damage is likely to be improved by a combination of behavioural training and natural or therapeutically enhanced synaptic plasticity mechanisms. Experience-dependent plasticity studies in the somatosensory cortex have begun to reveal those synaptic plasticity mechanisms that are driven by sensory experience a...

Histone posttranslational modifications play a fundamental role in orchestrating gene expression. In this work, we analyzed the acetylation of H3 and H4 histones (AcH3-AcH4) and its modulation by visual experience in the mouse visual cortex (VC) during normal development and in two experimental conditions that restore juvenile-like plasticity levels in adults (fluoxetine treatment and enriched ...

While lifelong language experience modulates subcortical encoding of pitch patterns, there is emerging evidence that short-term training introduced in adulthood also shapes subcortical pitch encoding. Here we use a cross-language design to examine the stability of language experience-dependent subcortical plasticity over multiple days. We then examine the extent to which behavioral relevance in...

Inhibitory neurons are heterogeneous in the mature brain. It is unclear when and how inhibitory neurons express distinct structural and functional profiles. Using in vivo time-lapse imaging of tectal neuron structure and visually evoked Ca(2+) responses in tadpoles, we found that inhibitory neurons cluster into two groups with opposite valence of plasticity after 4 hr of dark and visual stimula...

Hysteresis loop curves are highly important for numerical simulations of materials deformation under cyclic loadings. The models mainly take account of only the tensile half of the stabilized cycle in hysteresis loop for identification of the constants which don’t vary with accumulation of plastic strain and strain range of the hysteresis loop. This approach may be quite erroneous particularly ...