Plasticity in primary somatosensory cortex resulting from environmentally enriched stimulation and sensory discrimination training
Biol. Res
; 41(4): 425-437, Dec. 2008. ilus, tab
Article
em En
| LILACS
| ID: lil-518398
Biblioteca responsável:
BR1.1
ABSTRACT
We studied primary-somatosensory cortical plasticity due to selective stimulation of the sensory periphery by two procedures of active exploration in adult rats. Subjects, left with only three adjacent whiskers, were trained in a roughness discrimination task or maintained in a tactile enriched environment. Either training or enrichment produced 3-fold increases in the barrel cortex areas of behaviorally-engaged whisker representations, in their zones of overlap. While the overall areas of representation expanded dramatically, the domains of exclusive principal whisker responses were virtually identical in enriched vs normal rats and were significantly smaller than either group in roughness discrimination-trained rats. When animals were trained or exposed to enriched environments with the three whiskers arrayed in an are or row, very equivalent overlaps in representations were recorded across their greatly-enlarged whisker representation zones. This equivalence in distortion in these behavioral preparations is in contradistinction to the normal rat, where overlap is strongly biased only along rows, probably reflecting the establishment of different relations with the neighboring cortical columns. Overall, plasticity phenomena are argued to be consistent with the predictions of competitive Hebbian network plasticity.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
LILACS
Assunto principal:
Córtex Somatossensorial
/
Aprendizagem por Discriminação
/
Meio Ambiente
/
Comportamento Exploratório
/
Plasticidade Neuronal
Tipo de estudo:
Prognostic_studies
Limite:
Animals
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Biol. Res
Assunto da revista:
BIOLOGIA
Ano de publicação:
2008
Tipo de documento:
Article
/
Project document
País de afiliação:
Chile
/
Estados Unidos
País de publicação:
Chile