title: Spike-timing-dependent potentiation of sensory surround in the somatosensory cortex is facilitated by deprivation-mediated disinhibition.
abstract: Functional maps in the cerebral cortex reorganize in response to changes in experience, but the synaptic underpinnings remain uncertain. Here, we demonstrate that layer (L) 2/3 pyramidal cell synapses in mouse barrel cortex can be potentiated upon pairing of whisker-evoked postsynaptic potentials (PSPs) with action potentials (APs). This spike-timing-dependent long-term potentiation (STD-LTP) was only effective for PSPs evoked by deflections of a whisker in the neuron's receptive field center, and not its surround. Trimming of all except two whiskers rapidly opened the possibility to drive STD-LTP by the spared surround whisker. This facilitated STD-LTP was associated with a strong decrease in the surrounding whisker-evoked inhibitory conductance and partially occluded picrotoxin-mediated LTP facilitation. Taken together, our data demonstrate that sensory deprivation-mediated disinhibition facilitates STD-LTP from the sensory surround, which may promote correlation- and experience-dependent expansion of receptive fields.
authors.affiliation: Department of Basic Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, CMU, 1 rue Michel Servet, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland. frederic.gambino@unige.ch
authors.forename: Frédéric
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gambino
authors.forename: Anthony
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Holtmaat
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D017774:Long-Term Potentiation / Q000502:physiology*; D051379:Mice; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D010812:Physical Stimulation; D012683:Sensory Deprivation / Q000502:physiology; D013003:Somatosensory Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014738:Vibrissae / Q000294:innervation