background: the rodent somatosensory barrel cortex is an ideal model to examine the effect of experience-dependent plasticity on developing brain circuitry. sensory deprivation such as whisker deprivation may affect neuroanatomical aspects of the brain during developmental processes. the present study designed to investigate the possible effects of whisker deprivation on the morphometric charac...

Introduction: Barrel cortex of rodents is responsible for sensory information processing from muzzle whiskers. Locus coeruleus (LC) as the main source of norepinephrine (NE) in the cortex, is effective on the sensory information processing. Methods: Rats were divided to 2 groups. One group underwent sensory deprivation (P4) and the other group served as control and did not undergo sensory d...

The effects of sensory deprivation on excitatory and inhibitory activity in the primary somatosensory cortex were studied in the adult rat. Excitatory and inhibitory transmission generated by whisker stimulation, and neuronal responsiveness to iontophoretically applied excitatory amino acids were recorded. Whisker input deprivation, through whisker trimming for a median of 24 days, resulted in ...

introduction: barrel cortex of rats is a part of somatosensory cortex, which receives information from facial whiskers. vibrisectomy by sensory deprivation leads to some changes in the barrel cortex, which have been known as experience dependent plasticity. on the other hand, norepinephrine (ne) and locus coeruleus, which is the main source of ne, influenced response properties of cortical barr...

Introduction: Barrel cortex of rats is a part of somatosensory cortex, which receives information from facial whiskers. Vibrisectomy by sensory deprivation leads to some changes in the barrel cortex, which have been known as experience dependent plasticity. On the other hand, Norepinephrine (NE) and locus coeruleus, which is the main source of NE, influenced response properties of cortical bar...

How homeostatic processes contribute to map plasticity and stability in sensory cortex is not well-understood. Classically, sensory deprivation first drives rapid Hebbian weakening of spiking responses to deprived inputs, which is followed days later by a slow homeostatic increase in spiking responses mediated by excitatory synaptic scaling. Recently, more rapid homeostasis by inhibitory circui...

Calcium/calmodulin kinase II (CaMKII) is required for LTP and experience-dependent potentiation in the barrel cortex. Here, we find that whisker deprivation increases LTP in the layer IV to II/III pathway and that PKA antagonists block the additional LTP. No LTP was seen in undeprived CaMKII-T286A mice, but whisker deprivation again unmasked PKA-sensitive LTP. Infusion of a PKA agonist potentia...

Whisker deprivation weakens excitatory layer 4 (L4) inputs to L2/3 pyramidal cells in rat primary somatosensory (S1) cortex, which is likely to contribute to whisker map plasticity. This weakening has been proposed to represent long-term depression (LTD) induced by sensory deprivation in vivo. Here, we studied the synaptic expression mechanisms for deprivation-induced weakening of L4-L2/3 input...

The capacity of adult barrel cortex to show experience-dependent plasticity after early restricted neonatal sensory deprivation was analyzed in barrel field cortex neurons. Selective sensory deprivation was induced by trimming two whiskers from postnatal day 0 (P0) to P21, namely, the principal D2 whisker plus one adjacent surround whisker (D3). At maturity (P90), responses of supragranular (la...

This study investigated the role of sensory experience in the refinement of whisker sensory relay synapses in the ventral posterior medial nucleus (VPm) of the murine thalamus. Sensory deprivation was done by whisker plucking, and synaptic connectivity was determined by whole-cell patch-clamp recording in acute slices. Sensory deprivation started at P12-P13, but not at P16, disrupted the elimin...