Temporal refinement of sensory-evoked activity across layers in developing mouse barrel cortex.
Rhythmic whisking behavior in rodents fully develops during a critical period about 2 weeks after birth, in parallel with the maturation of other sensory modalities and the onset of exploratory locomotion. How whisker-related sensory processing develops during this period in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) remains poorly understood. Here, we characterized neuronal activity evoked by single- or dual-whisker stimulation patterns in developing S1, before, during and after the occurrence of active whisking. Employing multi-electrode recordings in all layers of barrel cortex in urethane-anesthetized mice, we find layer-specific changes in multi-unit activity for principal and neighboring b…
Layer-Specific Refinement of Sensory Coding in Developing Mouse Barrel Cortex
Rodent rhythmic whisking behavior matures during a critical period around 2 weeks after birth. The functional adaptations of neocortical circuitry during this developmental period remain poorly understood. Here, we characterized stimulus-evoked neuronal activity across all layers of mouse barrel cortex before, during, and after the onset of whisking behavior. Employing multi-electrode recordings and 2-photon calcium imaging in anesthetized mice, we tested responses to rostro-caudal whisker deflections, axial "tapping" stimuli, and their combination from postnatal day 10 (P10) to P28. Within this period, whisker-evoked activity of neurons displayed a general decrease in layer 2/3 (L2/3) and …