Abstract
The mechanisms underlying experience-dependent plasticity and refinement of central circuits are not yet fully understood. A non-Hebbian form of synaptic plasticity, which scales synaptic strengths up or down to stabilize firing rates, has recently been discovered in cultured neuronal networks. Here we demonstrate the existence of a similar mechanism in the intact rodent visual cortex. The frequency of miniature excitatory postsynaptic currents (mEPSCs) in principal neurons increased steeply between post-natal days 12 and 23. There was a concomitant decrease in mEPSC amplitude, which was prevented by rearing rats in complete darkness from 12 days of age. In addition, as little as two days of monocular deprivation scaled up mEPSC amplitude in a layer- and age-dependent manner. These data indicate that mEPSC amplitudes can be globally scaled up or down as a function of development and sensory experience, and suggest that synaptic scaling may be involved in the activity-dependent refinement of cortical connectivity.
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Change history
27 June 2002
Online figure was updated with note and PDF was ammended with note. Issue PDF contains "corrected 27 June 2002 (details online)"
Notes
NOTE: A corrupted electronic file led to an error in the AOP version of this paper. Parts of the axis lines and the figure labeling were missing in Fig. 5. This mistake has been corrected in the HTML version and will appear correctly in print. The PDF version available online has been appended.
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Acknowledgements
Supported by National Institutes of Health grants RO1 NS 36853 and EY 11116. We are grateful for the technical assistance of T. Casimiro and M. Miller.
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Desai, N., Cudmore, R., Nelson, S. et al. Critical periods for experience-dependent synaptic scaling in visual cortex. Nat Neurosci 5, 783–789 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn878
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn878
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