Review Article

Functional Consequences of the Disturbances in the GABA-Mediated Inhibition Induced by Injuriesin the Cerebral Cortex

Figure 1

Schematic illustration representing a model pyramidal neuron in the cortex surrounding the lesion with its excitatory and inhibitory inputs before, shortly after and some weeks after the lesion occurrence. This model shows the potential cellular mechanisms responsible for the functional rewiring of neuronal networks following cortical injuries. (a) Before the occurrence of a cortical lesion, some excitatory inputs are subthreshold (arrow) being masked by strong inhibitory inputs; (b) early after the cortical lesion occurrence (first week postlesion), subthreshold connections can be converted into functional (suprathreshold) ones (arrow) by the lesion-induced weakening of inhibitory inputs; (c) some weeks after the lesion, experience-dependent plastic processes will likely lead to the reinforcement of some of the new functional inputs, which turn out to be behavioral relevant after the lesion (black arrow) and to the suppression of excitatory inputs which became irrelevant (blue arrow). For clarity, many cellular and subcellular elements have been omitted; this draw represents, therefore, an oversimplification of a real scenario.
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