Siegrid Löwel: Panta rhei - the importance of silent synapses for vision and visual plasticity

Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Postsynaptic density protein 95 (PSD-95) is an important signalling scaffold of the PSD of excitatory synapses. We have previously shown that PSD-95 dependent AMPA-silent synapse maturation closes the critical period (CP) for ocular dominance plasticity in mouse V1 (Huang et al 2015): PSD-95 KO mice display both functional & structural hallmarks of CP plasticity and synapses cannot properly stabilize (Favaro et al 2018, Yusifov et al 2021). Since the development of binocularity happens during the CP, we hypothesized that PSD-95 KO mice should display compromised binocular integration. To test this hypothesis, we performed both behavioural experiments and multi-electrode electrophysiological recordings in primary visual cortex (V1) of awake mice. Our data strongly support an important role of experience-dependent silent synapse maturation for the refinement of cortical circuitry for proper binocular signal processing and vision. Supported by CRC889 & CIDBN.

Ref.: Huang et al (2015) PNAS 112: E3131-40, Favaro et al (2018) PLoS Biol 16: e2006838, Yusifov et al (2021) PNAS 118: e2022701118

 

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Klaus Obermayer / Margret Franke