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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on October 5, 2007
Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(6):1361-1373; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhm168
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© 2007 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Plasticity of Representational Maps in Somatosensory Cortex Observed by In Vivo Voltage-Sensitive Dye Imaging

Damian J. Wallace and Bert Sakmann

Department of Cell Physiology, Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Jahnstrasse 29, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany

Address correspondence to Damian J. Wallace, Department of Cell Physiology, Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Jahnstrasse 29, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany. Email: dhw{at}mpimf-heidelberg.mpg.de.

We investigated the effect of selective whisker trimming on the development of the cortical representation of a whisker deflection in layer 2/3 of rat somatosensory cortex using in vivo voltage-sensitive dye (vsd) imaging. Responses to deflection of D-row whiskers were recorded after trimming of A-row, B-row, and C-row whiskers, referred to as DE pairing, during postnatal development. Animals DE paired from postnatal day (p) 7 to p17 had a significant bias in the spread of the vsd signal, favoring spread toward the concomitantly nondeprived E-row columns. This resulted primarily from a strong decrease in signal spreading into the deprived C-row columns. In contrast, signal spread in control littermates was approximately symmetrical. DE pairing failed to elicit significant changes when begun after p14, thus defining a critical period for this phenomenon. The results suggest that sensory deprivation in this model results in lower connectivity being established between nondeprived columns and adjacent deprived ones.

Key Words: barrel cortex • cortical plasticity • critical period • sensory deprivation • whisker


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