synapse plasticity in motor, sensory, and limbo-prefrontal cortex areas as measured by degrading axon terminals in an environment model of gerbils (meriones unguiculatus)突触可塑性在电动机、感官和limbo-prefrontal皮层区域以可耻的轴突码头的环境模型沙鼠(梅里恩unguiculatus).pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Neural Plasticity Volume 2009, Article ID 281561, 14 pages doi:10.1155/2009/281561 Research Article Synapse Plasticity in Motor, Sensory, and Limbo-Prefrontal Cortex Areas as Measured by Degrading Axon Terminals in an Environment Model of Gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus ) Janina Neufeld,1 Gertraud Teuchert-Noodt,1 Keren Grafen,1 York Winter,2, 3 and A. Veronica Witte4 1 Department of Biology and Neuroanatomy, Bielefeld University, 33501, Bielefeld, Germany 2 Department of Biology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany 3 NeuroCure Center of Excellencey, Charite Universitatsmedizin, Berlin, Germany ´ ¨ 4 Department of Neurology, Charite Universitatsmedizin, Berlin, Germany ´ ¨ Correspondence should be addressed to A. Veronica Witte, vwitte@uni-muenster.de Received 20 April 2009; Accepted 26 June 2009 Recommended by Preston E. Garraghty Still little is known about naturally occurring synaptogenesis in the adult neocortex and related impacts of epigenetic influences. We therefore investigated (pre)synaptic plasticity in various cortices of adult rodents, visualized by secondary lysosome accumulations (LA) in remodeling axon terminals. Twenty-two male gerbils from either enriched (ER) or impoverished rearing (IR) were used for quantification of silver-stained LA. ER-animals showed rather low LA densities in most primary fields, whereas barrel and secondary/associative cortices exhibited higher densities and layer-specific differences. In IR-animals, these differences were evened out or even inverted. Basic plastic capacities might be linked with remodeling of local intrinsic circuits in the context of cortical map adaptation in bot