title: Food restriction enhances visual cortex plasticity in adulthood.
abstract: Neural circuits display a heightened sensitivity to external stimuli during well-established windows in early postnatal life. After the end of these critical periods, brain plasticity dramatically wanes. The visual system is one of the paradigmatic models for studying experience-dependent plasticity. Here we show that food restriction can be used as a strategy to restore plasticity in the adult visual cortex of rats. A short period of food restriction in adulthood is able both to reinstate ocular dominance plasticity and promote recovery from amblyopia. These effects are accompanied by a reduction of intracortical inhibition without modulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor expression or extracellular matrix structure. Our results suggest that food restriction could be investigated as a potential way of modulating plasticity.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Via Moruzzi 1, I-56100 Pisa, Italy.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Spolidoro
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Baroncelli
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Putignano
authors.forename: José Fernando
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Maya-Vetencourt
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Viegi
authors.forename: Lamberto
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Maffei
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000550:Amblyopia / Q000178:diet therapy* / Q000503:physiopathology; D000818:Animals; D031204:Caloric Restriction; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D023882:Dominance, Ocular; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans; D015349:Vision, Monocular; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*