Essential role for a long-term depression mechanism in ocular dominance plasticity.

ABSTRACT: The classic example of experience-dependent cortical plasticity is the ocular dominance (OD) shift in visual cortex after monocular deprivation (MD). The experimental model of homosynaptic long-term depression (LTD) was originally introduced to study the mechanisms that could account for deprivation-induced loss of visual responsiveness. One established LTD mechanism is a loss of sensitivity to the neurotransmitter glutamate caused by internalization of postsynaptic alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole propionic acid receptors (AMPARs). Although it has been shown that MD similarly causes a loss of AMPARs from visual cortical synapses, the contribution of this change to the OD shift has not been established. Using an herpes simplex virus (HSV) vector, we expressed in visual cortical n

SUBMITTER: Yoon BJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2685742 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature