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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Dec 22.
Published in final edited form as: Science. 2010 Nov 26;330(6008):1189–1190. doi: 10.1126/science.1198983

Figure 1. Easing the brakes on plasticity.

Figure 1

(A) In juvenile wild-type mice, closing one eye for several days causes the loss of projections on the inactive pathway from the retina to the visual cortex (red lines for this polysynaptic pathway) and gains on the active pathway (green). In the adult, several pathways function as brakes on this plasticity in ocular dominance. Lynx1 inhibits nAChRs. Myelin inhibitors or CSPG-rich perineuronal nets also prevent rearrangement (11, 12). Specific interventions can remove each of these brakes, including acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChE-I), NgR decoy protein, and chondroitinase (ChABC). (B) Nicotinic receptors are found on both pre- and postsynaptic elements of excitatory and inhibitory cortical neurons. Regulation of nAChRs by Lynx1 likely influences the balance of synaptic excitation and inhibition, and calcium influx through nAChRs may contribute to biochemical signaling pathways.