Peter W. Land

TL;DR: Functional plasticity in response to early experience appears to be a fundamental aspect of cortical development.

TL;DR: It is proposed that regions of high CO activity denote the “hollow” of the rat PMBSF barrels.

TL;DR: Histochemical staining for cytochrome oxidase (CO) and axonal transport of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) were used to investigate thalamocortical connections in the vibrissa‐barrel system of adult rats and revealed that a barreloid in the rat may contain 250‐300 neurons.

TL;DR: It is found that individual barrels contain minicolumns of neurons preferring the same deflection angle, which indicates that Angular tuning domains are established by convergent inputs from thalamocortical cells with corresponding angular preferences.

TL;DR: Early tactual deprivation disrupts mechanisms that permit modulation of transmitter enzyme levels in cortical neurons following changes in sensory experience, which indicates that GAD levels in the barrel cortex ordinarily fluctuate withChanges in sensory input.