Developmental sensory experience balances cortical excitation and inhibition

Anja L. Dorrn, Kexin Yuan, Alison J. Barker, Christoph E. Schreiner and Robert C. Froemke ()
Additional contact information
Anja L. Dorrn: Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, and NeuroCure Neuroscience Research Center (NWFZ)
Kexin Yuan: Coleman Memorial Laboratory and W.M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143, USA
Alison J. Barker: Coleman Memorial Laboratory and W.M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143, USA
Christoph E. Schreiner: Coleman Memorial Laboratory and W.M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143, USA
Robert C. Froemke: Coleman Memorial Laboratory and W.M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143, USA

Nature, 2010, vol. 465, issue 7300, 932-936

Abstract: Fine-tuning receptive fields In order to build a proper and stable representation of the auditory world, neonatal rodents exhibit a significant degree of circuit plasticity, allowing for sensitivity to the pattern of sensory inputs. During this time, neurons construct a receptive field, one that relies upon a particular balance of excitatory and inhibitory inputs, yet it is unknown as to how this balance is formed. Two studies published in this issue of Nature reveal contrasting views as to how the mature system develops. Excitation and inhibition were found to be equally strong upon hearing onset in each study. But whereas Dorrn et al. find evidence for an experience-dependent refinement of inhibition as the receptive fields develop, Sun et al. observed a fine adjustment in the excitatory input strength to produce a shifted balance. Nevertheless, taken together, both studies point towards a fine adjustment of synaptic inputs as the force behind the production of mature receptive fields, as opposed to more radical changes such as input pruning.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09119 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:465:y:2010:i:7300:d:10.1038_nature09119

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature09119

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().