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Inhibitory Sharpening of Receptive Fields Contributes to Whisker Map Plasticity in Rat Somatosensory Cortex

Division of Biological Sciences, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California

Submitted 26 May 2005; accepted in final form 3 September 2005

The role of inhibition in sensory cortical map plasticity is not well understood. Here we tested whether inhibition contributes to expression of receptive field plasticity in developing rat somatosensory (S1) cortex. In normal rats, microiontophoresis of gabazine (SR 95531), a competitive -aminobutyric acid (GABA)-A receptor antagonist, preferentially disinhibited surround whisker responses relative to principal whisker responses, indicating that GABA_A inhibition normally acts to sharpen whisker tuning. Plasticity was induced by transiently depriving adolescent rats of all but one whisker; this causes layer 2/3 (L2/3) receptive fields to shift away from the deprived principal whisker and toward the spared surround whisker. In units with shifted receptive fields, gabazine preferentially disinhibited responses to the deprived principal whisker, unlike in controls, suggesting that GABA_A inhibition was acting to preferentially suppress these responses relative to spared whisker responses. This effect was not observed for L2/3 units that did not express receptive field plasticity or in layer 4, where receptive field plasticity did not occur. Thus GABA_A inhibition promoted expression of sensory map plasticity by helping to sharpen receptive fields around the spared input.

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