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Synaptic plasticity

Balancing firing rates in vivo

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 14, page 821 (2013)Cite this article

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Manipulations that reduce or enhance sensory input to the cortex can be used to examine homeostatic responses. In their study, Hengen et al. used a well-established monocular visual deprivation (MD) paradigm, in which one eyelid is sutured, to reduce sensory drive to the visual cortex (V1) of freely behaving rats. Keck et al. reduced input to V1 more drastically by carrying out bilateral retinal lesions to eliminate all input resulting from retinal activity in mice.

Hengen et al. used a chronically-implanted multielectrode array to record the firing of V1 neurons receiving input from the sutured eye. Analysis of the recordings enabled them to separate the responses of regular spiking (RS) neurons (putative pyramidal cells) from those of putative fast-spiking (FS) interneurons. They revealed decreased firing in FS and RS neurons within 1 day and 2 days of MD, respectively, followed by a rebound to baseline levels by 2 and 6 days post-MD, respectively.

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References

  1. Keck, T. et al. Synpatic scaling and homeostatic plasticity in the mouse visual cortex in vivo. Neuron 80, 327–334 (2013)

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  2. Hengen, K. B. et al. Firing rate homeostasis in visual cortex of freely behaving rodents. Neuron 80, 335–342 (2013)

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  1. Katherine Whalley
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Whalley, K. Balancing firing rates in vivo. Nat Rev Neurosci 14, 821 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3637

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