None of the studies above have addressed all three issues together. To understand the decline in plasticity in adult V1, it may be helpful to first understand what purpose it serves. In zebra finches, active auditory feedback in adulthood is required for maintaining and continuously calibrating the song that was learned www.selleckchem.com/products/VX-770.html as juveniles (Brainard and Doupe, 2000). If these principles apply to the mouse V1, circuits involved in persistent adult plasticity may be important for continuous fine tuning of visual responses, and perhaps for maintaining

the binocular matching of receptive fields. Experiments to measure whether receptive fields remain stable and matched in the two eyes when adult plasticity is blocked or enhanced may illuminate the role of normal

adult plasticity. The classical studies by Hubel and Wiesel on ODP revealed that different elements of the neural circuit in V1 have different critical periods, suggesting that circuits have distinct roles (LeVay et al., 1980). Presently, very little is known about which intracortical circuits are reconfigured in ODP. It also remains unclear whether the same circuits that are required for the opening of the critical period are those altered in its expression. Similarly, we do not know whether different, similar, or only a subset Linsitinib research buy of the circuits involved in critical period ODP are reconfigured in adult ODP. Observing the anatomical and physiological changes

in specific subsets of neurons, preferably longitudinally in the same mouse, promises to provide insight into the developmentally regulated mechanisms of ODP. Below we discuss pharmacological and genetic manipulations that point to PV cells as regulators of the opening of the critical period. We either then discuss recent studies that have used genetic labeling methods and longitudinal two-photon imaging to measure physiological and structural changes in specific circuits during ODP induced by MD in vivo. Future studies will require thorough characterization of specific neuronal populations, including concurrent longitudinal measures of physiology and structure during ODP with or without genetic and pharmacological manipulations. Among the heterogeneous population of inhibitory interneurons, fast-spiking PV basket cells have been most clearly implicated in opening the critical period of ODP. PV cells receive direct thalamic input (Cruikshank et al., 2007), synapse predominantly onto somata and proximal dendrites that use GABAA receptor α1 subunits (Klausberger et al., 2002), and generate gamma-frequency (30–80 Hz) rhythmicity, which is important for sensory processing and learning (Sohal et al., 2009). PV cell maturation is experience dependent and correlates with the opening of critical period ODP (Chattopadhyaya et al., 2004).