Priebe Nicholas J, McGee Aaron W
Section of Neurobiology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX, USA.
Developmental Neuroscience Program, Saban Research Institute, Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, Department of Pediatrics, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Front Neural Circuits. 2014 Oct 2;8:123. doi: 10.3389/fncir.2014.00123. eCollection 2014.
Genetic programs controlling ontogeny drive many of the essential connectivity patterns within the brain. Yet it is activity, derived from the experience of interacting with the world, that sculpts the precise circuitry of the central nervous system. Such experience-dependent plasticity has been observed throughout the brain but has been most extensively studied in the neocortex. A prime example of this refinement of neural circuitry is found in primary visual cortex (V1), where functional connectivity changes have been observed both during development and in adulthood. The mouse visual system has become a predominant model for investigating the principles that underlie experience-dependent plasticity, given the general conservation of visual neural circuitry across mammals as well as the powerful tools and techniques recently developed for use in rodent. The genetic tractability of mice has permitted the identification of signaling pathways that translate experience-driven activity patterns into changes in circuitry. Further, the accessibility of visual cortex has allowed neural activity to be manipulated with optogenetics and observed with genetically-encoded calcium sensors. Consequently, mouse visual cortex has become one of the dominant platforms to study experience-dependent plasticity.
控制个体发育的基因程序驱动着大脑内许多基本的连接模式。然而，源自与外界互动体验的活动塑造了中枢神经系统的精确电路。这种依赖经验的可塑性在整个大脑中都有观察到，但在新皮层中研究得最为广泛。神经回路精细化的一个主要例子见于初级视觉皮层（V1），在发育过程中和成年期都观察到了功能连接的变化。鉴于跨哺乳动物视觉神经回路的普遍保守性以及最近为啮齿动物开发的强大工具和技术，小鼠视觉系统已成为研究依赖经验可塑性背后原理的主要模型。小鼠的遗传易操作性使得能够识别将经验驱动的活动模式转化为电路变化的信号通路。此外，视觉皮层的可及性使得可以用光遗传学操纵神经活动并用基因编码的钙传感器进行观察。因此，小鼠视觉皮层已成为研究依赖经验可塑性的主要平台之一。
