Neuronal responses to ongoing stimulation in many systems change over time, or “adapt.”
Despite the ubiquity of adaptation, its effects on the stimulus information carried by neurons …

Dendritic spines are cellular microcompartments that are isolated from their parent dendrites
and neighboring spines. Recently, imaging studies of spine Ca 2+ dynamics have revealed …

Cortical synaptic circuitry develops rapidly in the second postnatal week, simultaneous with
experience-dependent turnover of dendritic spines. To relate the emergence of sensory …

In the cerebral cortex, pyramidal cells and interneurons are generated in distant germinal
zones, and so the mechanisms that control their precise assembly into specific microcircuits …

The thalamo-cortical pathway is the crucial sensory gateway into the cerebral cortex. We
aimed to determine the nature of the tactile information encoded by neurons in the whisker …

The cerebral cortex contains multiple areas with distinctive cytoarchitectonic patterns, but the
cellular mechanisms underlying the emergence of this diversity remain unclear. Here, we …

Rats discriminate texture by whisking their vibrissae across the surfaces of objects. This
process induces corresponding vibrissa vibrations, which must be accurately represented by …

The development of layer 2/3 sensory maps in rat barrel cortex (BC) is experience dependent
with a critical period around postnatal days (PND) 10–14. The role of intrinsic response …

Adaptive processes over many timescales endow neurons with sensitivity to stimulus
changes over a similarly wide range of scales. Although spike timing of single neurons can …

Rodents can robustly distinguish fine differences in texture using their whiskers, a capacity
that depends on neuronal activity in primary somatosensory “barrel” cortex. Here we explore …