1. Neuroscience

A cortical disinhibitory circuit for enhancing adult plasticity

  1. Yu Fu
  2. Megumi Kaneko
  3. Yunshuo Tang
  4. Arturo Alvarez-Buylla
  5. Michael P Stryker  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of California, San Francisco, United States
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05558
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  1. Yu Fu
  2. Megumi Kaneko
  3. Yunshuo Tang
  4. Arturo Alvarez-Buylla
  5. Michael P Stryker
(2015)
A cortical disinhibitory circuit for enhancing adult plasticity
eLife 4:e05558.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05558
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Abstract

The adult brain continues to learn and can recover from injury, but the elements and operation of the neural circuits responsible for this plasticity are not known. In previous work we have: shown that locomotion dramatically enhances neural activity in the visual cortex (V1) of the mouse (Neill and Stryker, 2010); identified the cortical circuit responsible for this enhancement (Fu et al., 2014); and shown that locomotion also dramatically enhances adult plasticity (Kaneko and Stryker, 2014). The circuit responsible that is responsible for enhancing neural activity in the visual cortex contains both vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) and somatostatin (SST) neurons (Fu et al., 2014). Here we ask whether this VIP-SST circuit enhances plasticity directly, independent of locomotion and aerobic activity. Optogenetic activation or genetic blockade of this circuit reveal that it is both necessary and sufficient for rapidly increasing V1 cortical responses following manipulation of visual experience in adult mice. These findings reveal a disinhibitory circuit that regulates adult cortical plasticity.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Yu Fu

    Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  2. Megumi Kaneko

    Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  3. Yunshuo Tang

    Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  4. Arturo Alvarez-Buylla

    Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  5. Michael P Stryker

    Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
    For correspondence
    stryker@phy.ucsf.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Sacha B Nelson, Brandeis University, United States

Ethics

Animal experimentation: Mice were maintained in the Laboratory Animal Research Center at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and used in accordance with protocol AN098080-02A-G approved by the UCSF Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

Version history

  1. Received: November 12, 2014
  2. Accepted: January 22, 2015
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: January 27, 2015 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: February 13, 2015 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2015, Fu et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Yu Fu
  2. Megumi Kaneko
  3. Yunshuo Tang
  4. Arturo Alvarez-Buylla
  5. Michael P Stryker
(2015)
A cortical disinhibitory circuit for enhancing adult plasticity
eLife 4:e05558.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05558

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05558

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