Barrel cortex function

TL;DR: This work reveals sparse and spatially intermingled representations of multiple tactile features in mice expressing GCaMP6s and nuclear red fluorescent proteins during performance of a single whisker object localization task and an encoding model related activity to behavioral variables.

TL;DR: Early spontaneous activity patterns control the formation of developing networks in sensory cortices, and disturbances of these activity patterns may lead to long-lasting neuronal deficits.

TL;DR: The potential for the use of known critical and sensitive periods during vertebrate development to investigate and advance the understanding of the neural bases underlying impairments in these developmental disorders of the nervous system is highlighted.

TL;DR: Making whole-cell recordings in primary somatosensory barrel cortex of behaving mice shows that S1 neurons projecting to primary motor cortex and those projecting to secondary somatoensory cortex have distinct intrinsic membrane properties and exhibit markedly different membrane potential dynamics during behavior.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the morphological basis of the interactions between inhibitory interneurons and excitatory spiny neurons and also other inhibitory cells, which represent fundamental network properties which cause the so-called thalamo-cortical response transformation.

TL;DR: Glass micropipettes were used to record the activity of 124 single units in the somatosensory vibrissa cortex of 16 rats in response to combined deflections of contralateral vibrissae, finding that response suppression is strongest at short interdeflection intervals and decreases progressively during the 50-100 ms following the first deflection.

TL;DR: Surprisingly, the behavioural role of 'rewired' cortex is also influenced profoundly, indicating the importance of patterned activity for this key aspect of cortical function.

TL;DR: The results show that single neurons integrate rapid synaptic responses from a large proportion of the mystacial vibrissae, and suggest that the whisker-evoked responses of barrel neurons are a function of both synaptic inputs and intrinsic membrane properties.