Coordinated Plasticity between Barrel Cortical Glutamatergic and GABAergic Neurons during Associative Memory

Figure 1

Glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons in the barrel cortex respond to the odor signal (OS) and whisker signal (WS) after their pairing. Cellular activities were detected by imaging Ca²⁺ signals under a two-photon microscope in control () and CR-formation mice (), in which glutamatergic neurons were genetically labeled by YFP and GABAergic neurons were labeled by GFP. (a) Left panel shows the images of the glutamatergic neurons (yellow) and GABAergic neurons (green) in the barrel cortex from a CR-formation mouse. Right panel shows the neurons in response to WS and/or OS, which are defined as larger than 2.5-fold of standard deviation of baseline values. The neurons labeled by red are WS/OS-responsive cells. The neurons labeled by blue respond to WS. The neurons labeled by yellow respond to OS. (b) Left panel shows the images of glutamatergic neurons (yellow) and GABAergic neurons (green) in the barrel cortex from an unpaired control mouse. Right panel illustrates the neurons labeled by blue in response to WS. In (a)~(b), the glutamatergic neurons are marked as triangles and GABAergic neurons are marked as circles. (c) shows the digitized Ca²⁺ signals recorded from glutamatergic neurons in response to WS versus OS from unpaired control mouse (left panel) and CR-formation mouse (right). (d) shows the digitized Ca²⁺ signals recorded from GABAergic neurons in response to WS versus OS from an unpaired control mouse (left panel) and CR-formation mouse (right). The calibration bars are 40%    and 20 seconds.

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