Back-propagation of action potentials into the dendritic tree associated with increased calcium influx has been hypothesized Docetaxel price to play a major role in plasticity (Colbert, 2001 and Sourdet and Debanne, 1999) and differs qualitatively between RS and IB cells (Grewe et al., 2010). The parallels between structural spine plasticity and receptive field plasticity are remarkable. They have similar time course (Trachtenberg et al., 2002; Figure 6 and Figure 7), express themselves predominantly in the same cell types (Holtmaat et al., 2006; Figure 3), and depend on the same signal transduction mechanisms (Wilbrecht

et al., 2010). These similarities suggest strongly that the growth of new spines and associated synapse formation underlies receptive field plasticity (Knott et al., 2006). It remains to

identify the presynaptic partners to these spine changes. Our studies strongly implicate LII/III to V projections and thalamic inputs as major candidates for future studies. find more In vivo recordings were performed at Cardiff University and were approved under the UK Scientific Procedures Act 1986. C57Bl/6HsdOla mice and Long-Evans rats of both sexes were used for extracellular recordings (control: 7 rats and 9 mice; 3 day deprivation: 8 rats and 8 mice; 10 day deprivation: 10 rats and 8 mice). Intracellular recordings were performed in 23 control and 18 deprived Long-Evans male rats. In addition, 7 animals were required for histology only. The LSPS ex vivo study was performed on C57Bl/6J male mice at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, was approved by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory animal care and use committee and followed National Institutes of Health guidelines. Subjects were lightly anesthetized with isofluorane and had either the left C or D row of whiskers trimmed to length <1 mm (same length as the fur hairs) every 24 or 48 hr. For LSPS ex vivo; control animals were anesthetized and handled in the same way as the deprived groups but their whiskers were left intact; whisker trimming started also at postnatal

day (P) 30 and was continued for 3 days or 10–14 days before the recordings. For in vivo recordings; whisker trimming started at postnatal day (P) 32–45 and was continued for 3 days or 10 days before recording; the trimmed whiskers were kept and glued to the whisker stump before stimulation. Control and deprived animals were recorded at the same age, i.e., P40–44 for ex vivo and P42–55 for in vivo. For mouse cortex, we found no difference in response levels for normal mice and those where we trimmed the whiskers and immediately reattached them in layers II/III, IV, Va, or Vb (ANOVA, effect of layer F(3,3) = 2.7, p = 0.045; gluing F(1,1) = 0.32, p = 0.56; interaction F(3,3) = 1.0, p = 0.37)) and similarly for rats where we only sampled in layers Va and Vb (ANOVA, effect of layer F(1,1) = 0.78, p = 0.38; gluing F(1,1) = 0.53, p = 0.47; interaction F(1,1) = 0.94, p = 0.34).