title: Competition, inhibition, and critical periods of cortical plasticity.
abstract: Maturation of cortical inhibition just after eye opening is a necessary precedent for the emergence of competitive, experience-dependent ocular dominance plasticity in the visual cortex. What inhibition is doing in this context, though, is not clear. Here I outline new hypotheses on the roles of somatic and dendritic inhibition in the opening and closure of critical periods, and their roles in the competitive processes therein.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, United States. Electronic address: joshua.trachtenberg@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Joshua T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Trachtenberg
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D023882:Dominance, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D009433:Neural Inhibition / Q000502:physiology*; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity / Q000502:physiology*; D015348:Vision, Binocular / Q000502:physiology*; D015349:Vision, Monocular / Q000502:physiology*