PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Pages, Stéphane
AU  - Chenouard, Nicolas
AU  - Chéreau, Ronan
AU  - Kouskoff, Vladimir
AU  - Gambino, Frédéric
AU  - Holtmaat, Anthony
TI  - An increase in dendritic plateau potentials is associated with experience-dependent cortical map reorganization
AID  - 10.1101/2020.07.13.200923
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.07.13.200923
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/14/2020.07.13.200923.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/14/2020.07.13.200923.full
AB  - The organization of sensory maps in the cerebral cortex depends on experience, which drives homeostatic and long-term synaptic plasticity of cortico-cortical circuits. In the mouse primary somatosensory cortex (S1) afferents from the higher-order, posterior medial thalamic nucleus (POm) gate synaptic plasticity in layer (L) 2/3 pyramidal neurons via disinhibition and the production of dendritic plateau potentials. Here we address whether these thalamocortically mediated responses play a role in whisker map plasticity in S1. We find that trimming all but two whiskers causes a partial fusion of the representations of the two spared whiskers, concomitantly with an increase in the occurrence of POm-driven, N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR)-dependent plateau potentials. Blocking the plateau potentials restores the archetypical organization of the sensory map. Our results reveal a novel mechanism for experience-dependent cortical map plasticity in which higher-order thalamocortically mediated plateau potentials facilitate the fusion of normally segregated cortical representations.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.