, 2002, Maffei et al., 2006 and Marik et al., 2010) of GABAergic FS output synapses. These findings add to increasing GDC 973 evidence that FS cells are a site of robust experience-dependent development and

plasticity in vivo (Chittajallu and Isaac, 2010, Jiao et al., 2006, Maffei et al., 2004, Maffei et al., 2006 and Yazaki-Sugiyama et al., 2009). Prior work showed that D-row deprivation reduces feedforward and recurrent excitation into L2/3 of deprived columns (Allen et al., 2003, Bender et al., 2006, Cheetham et al., 2007 and Shepherd et al., 2003), but whether plasticity was coordinated between excitatory and inhibitory circuits was unknown. Because sensory responses in cortical neurons depend strongly on the balance and timing of convergent excitation and inhibition (Pouille et al., 2009, Wehr and Zador, 2003 and Wilent and Contreras, 2005), we simultaneously measured L4-evoked feedforward inhibition and excitation onto single L2/3 pyramidal cells and found that 6–12 days of D-row deprivation caused a coreduction in excitation and inhibition in which the ratio of excitation to inhibition

in single cells was preserved, on average, in the population, relative to spared columns (Figure 8). Deprivation delayed both excitation and inhibition by ∼1 ms but did not alter their relative timing. Thus, Hebbian weakening of deprived inputs in S1 is associated with a coordinated LGK-974 ic50 decrease and delay in feedforward excitation and inhibition. Most neurons in L2/3 of S1 respond to whisker deflection with subthreshold depolarization, reflecting sparse spike coding in this region (Crochet et al., 2011). To understand how coreduction of excitation and inhibition affects L4-evoked subthreshold responses, we used a single-compartment parallel Sodium butyrate conductance

model (Wehr and Zador, 2003) to predict the PSP produced by the measured L4-evoked Ge and Gi waveforms measured in each pyramidal cell. This model showed that the measured coreduction in feedforward excitation and inhibition will produce a net decrease in L4-evoked PSP amplitude (Figure S5). Thus, this effect is appropriate to explain the Hebbian weakening of L2/3 responses to deprived whiskers. Additional factors mediating reduced L2/3 spiking probability in vivo may include nonlinear amplification of PSP weakening by the spike threshold (Foeller et al., 2005 and Priebe and Ferster, 2008), reduced L2/3 recurrent excitation (Cheetham et al., 2007), or potential changes in feedback inhibition. Whereas the reduction in feedforward excitation is predicted to decrease PSP amplitude, the reduction in feedforward inhibition is expected to increase PSP amplitude and therefore represents a partial, covert compensatory mechanism. This compensation is termed “covert” because it does not result in increased whisker-evoked or spontaneous spikes in vivo (Drew and Feldman, 2009). How coordinated weakening of inhibition and excitation is achieved is an important topic for future work.