Elsevier

Brain Research

Volume 489, Issue 1, 5 June 1989, Pages 167-176
Brain Research

Critical period-dependent alterations of the transient body image in the rodent cerebral cortex

https://doi.org/10.1016/0006-8993(89)90020-6Get rights and content

Abstract

The present study demonstrates that the boundary patterns of cell surface-associated molecules detected with lectins in the barrel cortex of neonatal rodents are altered, as are the boundary patterns of cortical glia, following perturbation of large vibrissae in the contralateral mystacial face pad. The alterations in the transiently expressed molecular patterns of lectin-receptors provide data that are consistent with the idea that the periphery plays a prominent role in the establishment of functional cytoarchitecture in the developing cortex. The data are also consistent, however, with the notion that factors intrinsic to the cerebrum, such as the immature cortical glial cells, are of considerable importance in this respect and a direct or indirect interaction of thalamocortical afferents with glial cells in the somatosensory cortex of the neonate are indicated. It is suggested therefore that a critical period in early barrel development, a time in which the cortical neuronal architecture is malleable in response to altered afferent input, is directly related to the presence of these cellular and molecular boundaries. The transient barrel boundaries, it is argued, are the morphological and molecular substrates that form the physical basis of the critical period.

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      Initially expressed broadly at high levels (Figure 3, lower inset), the matrix is progressively spatially restricted until it exclusively defines the adult SVZ (Figure 3). Put another way, cortical boundary astrocytes retract their radial glial-like connections to the pia and undergo other aspects of terminal differentiation in precisely the same interval of time that coincides with the end of the critical window for cortical neurosphere formation and the withdrawal of the germinal ECM into the adult germinal center [43]. Is the boundary astrocyte the neurosphere-forming cell of the neonatal cortex?

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    We wish to thank Linda Snyder and Kristine Harrington for their expert technical assistance. We gratefully acknowledge the support of USPHS Grants EY-02708 (N.G.F.C.) and NS-20856 (D.A.S.).

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