Fig. 6: Enhance ALBSF functional map in the postnatal embWPC mice.
From: A prenatal window for enhancing spatial resolution of cortical barrel maps
a Schema representing the experimental paradigm. b Cortical evoked responses (GCaMP6f) within the PMBSF and ALBSF to five distinct wps and two distinct uls in control and embWPC mice at P4. Dashed lines define the cortical hemisphere, and continuous lines indicate the territory covered by elicited responses. c Quantification of the percentage of overlap between two distinct PMBSF and two distinct ALBSF responses at P4 (n = 8 ctrl for PMBSF responses, n = 9 ctrl for ALBSF responses, n = 6 embWPC for ALBSF responses). d Schema representing the experimental paradigm. e Cortical flattened tangential sections showing thalamocortical terminals and cFOS expression in cortical ipsilateral (control) and contralateral (WPC) sides of P60 mice. f Quantification of the mean gray value of cFOS expression (n = 8 embWPC ipsi PMBSF, n = 8 embWPC ipsi ALBSF, n = 8 embWPC contra (WPC) PMBSF, n = 8 embWPC contra (WPC) ALBSF). g Schematic representation of the three experimental groups involved in the behavioral paradigm: mice with intact whiskers (ctrl n = 8); mice with bilateral whisker pad cauterization at E14 and intact upper lip whiskers (bi-embWPC n = 7) and mice with trimmed mystacial whiskers and intact upper lip whiskers (trimmed n = 8). h Schema representing the texture discrimination task protocol. i Representative heatmaps showing the distribution of snout positions during a 5-min test session for individual mice from each group (top), along with corresponding centroid trajectories (bottom). Warmer colors in the heatmaps denote regions with higher snout position frequency, highlighting areas of increased exploratory interest. j Left, boxplots comparing the total time that control, bi-embWPC and trimmed mice spent exploring textured objects across t1 and t2 sessions. Right, evaluation of texture discrimination performance comparing the discrimination index for each session. Source data are provided as a Source data file. Scale bars, a 1000 μm and e 500 μm. Bar graphs show the means ± SEM. ns not significant. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. Mouse images were created in BioRender. Martini, F. (2025) https://BioRender.com/l19k613.
