Past events

Abstract: The ability to adapt to and learn from sensory experiences is crucial for an animal’s survival and underlies many of our cognitive capabilities, and a central question in neurobiology thus concerns the place within a neural circuit where these adaptions happen and the molecular mechanisms that mediate them. Neural circuits in the neocortex adapt to sensory experience by the induction of genes that function at synaptic sites to regulate circuit activity and to maintain the balance between excitation and inhibition (E/I balance). While the molecular mechanisms associated with the modulation of specific synapses has been studied extensively in excitatory neurons, far less is known about how sensory experience regulates synaptic inputs to inhibitory neurons and how these mechanisms might regulate E/I-balance in cortical circuits. In my talk, I will discuss our recent findings regarding the nature of the gene programs that are induced by sensory experience in cortical inhibitory neurons and the molecular mechanisms through which these gene programs modulate specific synaptic inputs to functionally distinct inhibitory neuron subtypes and thereby regulate E/I-balance within cortical circuits. Our experiments reveal that experience-induced gene programs in cortical neurons are far more subtype-specific than previously appreciated and that these gene programs are adapted to the function of each neuronal subtype within the circuit in a manner that mediates circuit homeostasis and plasticity in the neocortex.