Vibrissa-signaled eyeblink conditioning induces somatosensory cortical plasticity.

Full Abstract

Whisker deflection conditioned stimuli (CS) were demonstrated to activate physiologically and anatomically defined barrels in the contralateral somatosensory cortex and to support trace-eyeblink conditioned responses when paired with corneal airpuff unconditioned stimuli in rabbits. Analysis of cytochrome-oxidase-stained somatosensory whisker-associated cortical barrels revealed a row-specific expansion of the conditioned compared with the nontrained hemisphere. This expansion was not evident in pseudo-conditioned rabbits, suggesting that this expansion of conditioned cortical barrels in response to a hippocampal- and forebrain-dependent learning task (trace conditioning) is associative rather than activity dependent. Using whisker stimulation as a CS in the well studied eyeblink conditioning paradigm will facilitate characterizing sensory cortical involvement in controlling and modulating an associatively learned response at the neural systems and cellular level.

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Author information

Author/s: Galvez, Roberto (R); Weiss, Craig (C); Weible, Aldis P (AP); Disterhoft, John F (JF);

Affiliation: Department of Physiology, Institute for Neuroscience, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA. r-galvez(-atsign-)northwestern.edu

Grants: R01 MH47340 (Agency:NIMH NIH HHS) ; T32 AG20506 (Agency:NIA NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Journal: The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience (J Neurosci), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-May; vol 26 (issue 22) : pp 6062-8

Dates: Created 2006/06/01; Completed 2006/06/23; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 16738249, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Animals
Blinking
Cerebral Cortex - physiology
Conditioning (Psychology)
Electron Transport Complex IV - metabolism
Electrophysiology - methods
Female
Functional Laterality

Functional Laterality
Models, Animal
Neuronal Plasticity
Physical Stimulation
Rabbits
Somatosensory Cortex - enzymology; physiology
Stereotaxic Techniques
Vibrissae - innervation

Associated Chemicals: Electron Transport Complex IV (EC 1.9.3.1)

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