Fig. 1: Whisker pad deprivation in embryos rescales barrel field areas and thalamocortical circuits.

a Left and middle, iDISCO frontal snout views showing the whisker pad (magenta) and upper lip (cyan) areas, lateral 3D-reconstructions of the follicles (yellow) at E18. Right, Nissl stainings of the snout at P8, red dashed line delimits upper lip area. b Quantification (iDISCO E18, n = 5 ctrl, n = 5 embWPC. Nissl P8, n = 8 ctrl, n = 9 embWPC). c Surface view of thalamocortical terminals (TCA-GFP+) in the PMBSF and ALBSF at P8. d Quantification (n = 8 ctrl, n = 9 embWPC). e Upper panels, DiI and DiA crystal placements in the C2 PMBSF and in the ALBSF, respectively, at P8. Lower panels, backlabelled cells in the wpVPM and ulVPM. f Quantification of the position of backlabelled cells with respect to the distance to the dLG nucleus. The gray horizontal dashed line represents the separation between wpVPM and ulVPM (n = 6 ctrl, n = 6 embWPC). g Surface view of TCA-GFP+ in the PMBSF and ALBSF at P8. h Quantification of the data (n = 8 ctrl, n = 9 P0WPC). i Upper panels, DiI and DiA crystal placements in the C3 PMBSF and in the ALBSF, respectively, at P8. Lower panels, backlabelled cells in the wpVPM and ulVPM. j Quantification of the position of backlabelled cells with respect to the distance to the dLG nucleus. The gray horizontal dashed line represents the separation between wpVPM and ulVPM (n = 5 ctrl, n = 5 P0WPC). Source data are provided as a Source data file. wp whisker pad, ul upper lip, E embryonic, P postnatal, embWPC embryonic whisker pad cauterized, P0WPC postnatal day 0 whisker pad cauterized, vol. volume, no. number, TCA-GFP thalamocortical axons labeled with a green fluorescent protein, norm. normalized. Scale bars: a (left), c, e (top), g, i (top) 500 μm; a (middle) 400 μm; a (right) 1000 μm; e (bottom), and i (bottom) 200 μm. Boxplots show the medians with the interquartile range (box) and range (whiskers). Bar graphs show the means ± SEM. ns not significant. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.