RT Journal
A1 Chen, Xiao-jing
A1 Rasch, Malte J.
A1 Chen, Guang
A1 Ye, Chang-quan
A1 Wu, Si
A1 Zhang, Xiao-hui
T1 Binocular Input Coincidence Mediates Critical Period Plasticity in the Mouse Primary Visual Cortex
JF The Journal of Neuroscience 
JO The Journal of Neuroscience 
YR 2014 
FD February 19 
VO 34 
IS 8 
SP 2940 
OP 2955 
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2640-13.2014 
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/34/8/2940.abstract 
AB Classical studies on the development of ocular dominance (OD) organization in primary visual cortex (V1) have revealed a postnatal critical period (CP), during which visual inputs between the two eyes are most effective in shaping cortical circuits through synaptic competition. A brief closure of one eye during CP caused a pronounced shift of response preference of V1 neurons toward the open eye, a form of CP plasticity in the developing V1. However, it remains unclear what particular property of binocular inputs during CP is responsible for mediating this experience-dependent OD plasticity. Using whole-cell recording in mouse V1, we found that visually driven synaptic inputs from the two eyes to binocular cells in layers 2/3 and 4 became highly coincident during CP. Enhancing cortical GABAergic transmission activity by brain infusion with diazepam not only caused a precocious onset of the high coincidence of binocular inputs and OD plasticity in pre-CP mice, but rescued both of them in dark-reared mice, suggesting a tight link between coincident binocular inputs and CP plasticity. In Thy1-ChR2 mice, chronic disruption of this binocular input coincidence during CP by asynchronous optogenetic activation of retinal ganglion cells abolished the OD plasticity. Computational simulation using a feed-forward network model further suggests that the coincident inputs could mediate this CP plasticity through a homeostatic synaptic learning mechanism with synaptic competition. These results suggest that the high-level correlation of binocular inputs is a hallmark of the CP of developing V1 and serves as neural substrate for the induction of OD plasticity.