Experience dependence of alpha rhythms and neural dynamics in mouse visual cortex.

The role of experience in the development and maintenance of emergent network properties such as cortical oscillations and states is poorly understood. To define how early-life experience affects cortical dynamics in the visual cortex of adult, head-fixed mice, we examined the effects of two forms of blindness initiated before eye-opening and continuing through recording in adulthood: (1) bilateral loss of retinal input (enucleation) and (2) degradation of visual input (eyelid-suture). Neither form of deprivation fundamentally altered the state-dependent regulation of firing-rates or local field potentials. However, each form of deprivation did cause a unique set of changes in network behavior. Laminar analysis revealed two different generative mechanisms for low-frequency synchronization, one prevalent during movement, the other during quiet-wakefulness. The former was absent in enucleated mice, suggesting a mouse homolog of human alpha oscillations. In addition, neurons in enucleated animals were less correlated and fired more regularly, but showed no change in mean firing-rate. Chronic lid-suture decreased firing rates during quiet-wakefulness, but not during movement, with no effect on neural correlations or regularity. Sutured animals showed a broadband increase in dEEG power and an increased occurrence, but reduced central frequency, of narrowband gamma oscillations. The complementary--rather than additive--effects of lid-suture and enucleation suggest that the development of these emergent network properties does not require vision but is plastic to modified input. Our results suggest a complex interaction of internal set-points and experience determines the expression of mature cortical activity, with low-frequency synchronization being particularly susceptible to early deprivation.

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