Johns Hopkins Kavli NDI Neuroscientist Dr. Hey-Kyoung Lee and colleagues recent study suggests cross-modal sensory manipulations as a potential method to facilitate plasticity in the adult brain. They used targeted optogenetic activation of TC synapses to demonstrate the reemergence of NMDAR-dependent LTP at V1 TC synapses following a week of deafening adult mice (post-natal day 90 to 120), which occurred without recovery of TC-LTD. In addition, they found that deafening increases the excitation to inhibition ratio of TC inputs onto L4 principal neurons.

Read the full article "Cross-Modal Reinstatementof Thalamocortical Plasticity Accelerates OcularDominance Plasticity in Adult Mice" published in Cell Reports.