AsianScientist (Mar. 24, 2015) – The plasticity of the brain—its ability to change in response to behaviorial and environmental stimuli—is essential for learning and memory. A study published in PLOS Biology has now identified cofilin1 as an important gene for regulating plasticity in the cerebral cortex, at least in rodents.
Connectivity between neurons engaged in various circuits is constantly changing depending on our experience, resulting in plastic changes in cerebral cortical neural connections that are the basis of our learning and memory.
Cofilin1 is known to regulate the strength of connections between neurons through physically increasing or decreasing the connection surface. Although its function has been studied mainly in the hippocampus, its role in the cerebral cortex is still unclear. Specifically, it is essential to identify circuits in which cofilin1 regulates connectivity between neurons.
A region in the cerebral cortex of rats and other rodents represents sensations from the whiskers. Using a rat in which the expression of the cofilin1 gene was suppressed in this region, researchers led by Assistant Professor Tadashi Tsubota at the University of Tokyo artificially blocked sensory stimulus from the whiskers and then induced plastic change in the region. They discovered that cofilin1-mediated morphological changes in neurons was required only for plastic changes that occurred between regions that represent the sensations from individual whiskers.
This new finding will enhance our understanding of cofilin1 function in the cerebral cortex. Furthermore, this research showed an important methodological development; optogenetic manipulation—which has typically been performed in a wide area of or throughout the cerebral cortex—can be restricted to selected neural circuits in the cerebral cortex.
The article can be found at: Tsubota et al. (2015) Cofilin1 Controls Transcolumnar Plasticity in Dendritic Spines in Adult Barrel Cortex.
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Source: University of Tokyo.
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