Experience-dependent plasticity of dendritic spines in the developing rat barrel cortex in vivo

Balazs Lendvai, Edward A. Stern, Brian Chen and Karel Svoboda ()
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Balazs Lendvai: Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Edward A. Stern: Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Brian Chen: Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Karel Svoboda: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Nature, 2000, vol. 404, issue 6780, 876-881

Abstract: Abstract Do changes in neuronal structure underlie cortical plasticity1,2? Here we used time-lapse two-photon microscopy3,4 of pyramidal neurons in layer 2/3 of developing rat barrel cortex5 to image the structural dynamics of dendritic spines and filopodia. We found that these protrusions were highly motile: spines and filopodia appeared, disappeared or changed shape over tens of minutes. To test whether sensory experience drives this motility we trimmed whiskers one to three days before imaging. Sensory deprivation markedly (∼40%) reduced protrusive motility in deprived regions of the barrel cortex during a critical period around postnatal days (P)11–13, but had no effect in younger (P8–10) or older (P14–16) animals. Unexpectedly, whisker trimming did not change the density, length or shape of spines and filopodia. However, sensory deprivation during the critical period degraded the tuning of layer 2/3 receptive fields. Thus sensory experience drives structural plasticity in dendrites, which may underlie the reorganization of neural circuits.

Date: 2000
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DOI: 10.1038/35009107

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