Fig. 4

VPM neurons are hyperexcitable following neonatal lesions of whisker input pathways. a At P15, IONS leads to increased excitability of VPM neurons, which occludes the effects of the K⁺ channel blocker BaCl₂. (Ctl n = 7, IONS n = 5, IONS + BaCl₂ n = 6). One-way ANOVA with Tukey's post-hoc test, ***P < 0.001, NS, not significant. b IONS causes increased burstiness of VPM neurons in vivo. Left, top: multiunit activity recorded in VPM IONS. Two putative single units can be identified (green and red tick marks). Left, bottom: increased power in the 100–300 Hz frequency band during bursting activity. Center: sample traces showing VPM neuron activity in vivo. Shaded areas represent the interquartile range of the power spectral density (PSD). Right: summary plot of the normalized PSD integral. Lines represent individual mice (n = 12). Wilcoxon signed-rank test, *P < 0.05. c Dendritic complexity is strongly decreased following IONS (P7 IONS n = 10 from 2 mice). P7 WT and P2 WT data reported from Fig. 1b. One-way ANOVA with Tukey's post-hoc test for all statistical tests relating to dendritic complexity, except for Sholl analyses for which a two-way ANOVA with Tukey's post-hoc test was used. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. Scale bar: 20 μm