Combining GABA with fMRI measurements in the human brain uncovers distinct suppression mechanisms that optimize perceptual decisions through learning and experience-dependent plasticity in the visual cortex.
Evolutionary novelty is promoted by a macroevolutionary pulse of developmental plasticity, but is enhanced by secondary fixation, which permits developmental character release and further morphological exploration.
Structural brain plasticity is encoded in the topographic distribution of Toll receptors and their ability to switch between alternative signalling outcomes, thus translating diverse sensory experience into structural change.
Matrix metalloproteinases play a crucial role in adult visual plasticity in the brains of healthy and stroke-affected mice and their activity has to be within a narrow window for experience-induced plasticity to occur.
Behavioral pharmacology and molecular biology reveal a translational control mechanism underlying auditory imprinting and structural plasticity that can be pharmacologically manipulated to reopen the critical period.
Parvalbumin-containing inhibitory neurons are crucial for expression of plasticity in adult visual cortex that supports visual recognition memory, but not for expression of ocular dominance plasticity that results from monocular deprivation.
Conditional knockout of the small GTPase Cdc42 in excitatory neurons of the mouse forebrain leads to impaired long-term synaptic plasticity and impaired retrieval of remote memory.
Lineage specification and commitment are synchronized in the developing trophectoderm lineage of the mouse embryo, but are asynchronous events in the maturing inner cell mass, revealing a window of plasticity in this lineage.