Tactile enrichment drives emergence of functional columns and improves sensory coding in L2/3 of mouse S1

Amy M. LeMessurier, Daniel E. Feldman
2018 · doi:10.1101/447508
preprint OA: closed CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0
📄 Open PDF View at publisher

Abstract

SUMMARY Sensory maps in layer (L) 2/3 of rodent cortex lack precise functional column boundaries, and instead exhibit locally heterogeneous tuning superimposed on smooth global topography. Could this organization be a byproduct of impoverished experience in laboratory housing? We compared whisker map somatotopy in L2/3 and L4 excitatory cells of somatosensory (S1) cortex in normally housed vs. tactile-enriched mice, using GCaMP6s imaging. Normally housed mice had a dispersed, salt-and-pepper whisker map in L2/3, but L4 was more topographically precise. Enrichment (P21 to P46-71) sharpened whisker tuning and decreased, but did not abolish, local tuning heterogeneity. In L2/3, enrichment strengthened and sharpened whisker point representations, and created functional boundaries of tuning similarity and noise correlations at column edges. Thus, tactile experience drives emergence of functional columnar topography in S1, and reduces salt-and-pepper tuning heterogeneity. These changes predict improved single-trial population coding of whisker deflections within each column.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. The paper's references may be in our DB but unresolved to ``paper_id`` (resolution happens at ingest when the cited DOI matches a row we already have). Run the cross-source citation reconcile pass to retry.

References (50)

Source provenance

crossref
last seen: 2026-05-22T01:00:13.017521+00:00
europepmc
last seen: 2026-05-19T01:45:01.086888+00:00
unpaywall
last seen: 2026-05-21T05:10:58.409756+00:00
License: CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0