Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2019 Apr 16;13:41. doi: 10.3389/fnana.2019.00041

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

Copyright © 2019 Kanold, Deng and Meng.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

PMC Copyright notice

(A) Changing circuits between thalamus (Th), subplate (SP) and cortical layers 4 (L4) and 1 (L1). Insets show the existence of NMDA-R only “silent” synapses at early ages. (B) Cartoon illustration mapping of connections to subplate neurons (SPNs) via laser-scanning photostimulation (LSPS). Patch clamp recordings in voltage clamp are made from SPNs and locations are selectively stimulated. The SPN is recorded at −70 mV and +40 mV membrane potential at each stimulation location. Traces (a–c) indicate three potential outcomes of stimulation at the respective locations. (a) Stimulation of presynaptic locations that were connected to the SPN with AMPA and NMDARs resulted in excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) at both −70 mV and +40 mV. (b) Stimulation of presynaptic locations that were connected to the SPN with only NMDARs resulted in EPSCs at only +40 mV. (c) Stimulation of presynaptic locations that were not connected to the SPN resulted in no EPSCs at either −70 mV and +40 mV. Bottom shows calculating the spatial connection probability from maps of NMDAR-only connections (e.g., sites similar to site b). White circle indicates soma location of SPN. Maps of individual neurons are aligned to the soma and the probability of observing an EPSC is calculated for all relative spatial locations. (C) Changing topology of silent synapses over development. Shown are average connection probability and mean charge maps from LSPS experiments (from Meng et al., 2014). Cartoon below summarizes these data. At early ages, silent synapses are present between L4, L6/6, SP and SP and have a large synaptic strength. Silent synapses are most abundant at P6-P9 and at older ages, the strength of silent synapses has decreased.