Abstract
Neocortical circuits exhibit spontaneous neuronal activity whose functional relevance remains enigmatic. Several proposed functions assume that sensory experience can influence subsequent spontaneous activity. However, long-term alterations in spontaneous firing rates following sensory stimulation have not been reported until now. Here we show that multi-whisker, spatiotemporally rich stimulation of mouse vibrissae induces a laminar-specific, long-term increase of spontaneous activity in the somatosensory cortex. Such stimulation additionally produces stereotypical neural ensemble firing patterns from simultaneously recorded single neurons, which are maintained during spontaneous activity following stimulus offset. The increased neural activity and concomitant ensemble firing patterns are sustained for at least 25 minutes after stimulation, and specific to layers IV and Vb. In contrast, the same stimulation protocol applied to a single whisker fails to elicit this effect. Since layer Vb has the largest receptive fields and, together with layer IV, receives direct thalamic and lateral drive, the increase in firing activity could be the result of mechanisms involving the integration of spatiotemporal patterns across multiple whiskers. Our results provide direct evidence of modification of spontaneous cortical activity by sensory stimulation and could offer insight into the role of spatiotemporal integration in memory storage mechanisms for complex stimuli.
