Transient enhancement of stimulus-evoked activity in neocortex during sensory learning.

ABSTRACT: Synaptic potentiation has been linked to learning in sensory cortex, but the connection between this potentiation and increased sensory-evoked neural activity is not clear. Here, we used longitudinal in vivo Ca²⁺ imaging in the barrel cortex of awake mice to test the hypothesis that increased excitatory synaptic strength during the learning of a whisker-dependent sensory-association task would be correlated with enhanced stimulus-evoked firing. To isolate stimulus-evoked responses from dynamic, task-related activity, imaging was performed outside of the training context. Although prior studies indicate that multiwhisker stimuli drive robust subthreshold activity, we observed sparse activation of L2/3 pyramidal (Pyr) neurons in both control and trained mice. Despite evidence for

SUBMITTER: Zhu M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11261211 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature