Abstract
Preventing visual input to one eye (monocular deprivation) in early postnatal development reduces cortical responses to stimulation of the deprived eye, with a significant loss of thalamocortical connections. These effects are reversible by opening the deprived eye and closing the previously open eye (reverse occlusion). We show that intracortical blockade of tissue plasminogen activator or plasmin selectively prevents recovery of cortical function and thalamic neuron size during reverse occlusion, without affecting the monocular deprivation response. Therefore, a proteolytic cascade consisting of plasmin generated by tissue plasminogen activator may selectively mediate reverse-occlusion-induced cortical plasticity, perhaps via structural remodeling of axons.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds to C.B.G and by DFG Mü908/3-1, European Commission (DG-XII/BIOTECH) and G.A.B.I. (III) to C.M.M. We appreciate the expert technical assistance by Veronica Dossinger, Uwe Fauser and Regina Ort and are indebted to Matthias Munk and Tobias Bonhoeffer for critical comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.
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Müller, C., Griesinger, C. Tissue plasminogen activator mediates reverse occlusion plasticity in visual cortex. Nat Neurosci 1, 47–53 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/248
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/248
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