Vibrissa-signaled eyeblink conditioning induces somatosensory cortical plasticity.
Whisker deflection conditioned stimuli (CS) were demonstrated to activate physiologically and anatomically defined barrels in the contralateral somatosensory cortex and to support trace-eyeblink conditioned responses when paired with corneal airpuff unconditioned stimuli in rabbits. Analysis of cytochrome-oxidase-stained somatosensory whisker-associated cortical barrels revealed a row-specific expansion of the conditioned compared with the nontrained hemisphere. This expansion was not evident in pseudo-conditioned rabbits, suggesting that this expansion of conditioned cortical barrels in response to a hippocampal- and forebrain-dependent learning task (trace conditioning) is associative rather than activity dependent. Using whisker stimulation as a CS in the well studied eyeblink conditioning paradigm will facilitate characterizing sensory cortical involvement in controlling and modulating an associatively learned response at the neural systems and cellular level.
Galvez
Roberto
R
Department of Physiology, Institute for Neuroscience, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA. r-galvez@northwestern.edu
Weiss
Craig
C
Weible
Aldis P
AP
Disterhoft
John F
JF
D000818:Animals; D001767:Blinking; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D003576:Electron Transport Complex IV / Q000378:metabolism; D004594:Electrophysiology / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D023421:Models, Animal; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity; D010812:Physical Stimulation; D011817:Rabbits; D013003:Somatosensory Cortex / Q000201:enzymology / Q000502:physiology*; D013238:Stereotaxic Techniques; D014738:Vibrissae / Q000294:innervation*
D003576:Electron Transport Complex IV