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. 2019 Aug 16;8:e46321. doi: 10.7554/eLife.46321

Figure 4. Enrichment sharpens whisker tuning curves.

(A) Mean receptive field for all responsive ROIs, calculated after ranking whiskers from strongest to weakest in each cell and normalizing median responses to spontaneous activity. Asterisks, significant difference between EN and NH, computed separately by permutation test for each whisker rank. *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001. (B), Mean receptive fields separated into CW and ranked SW whiskers. (C) Effect of enrichment on spontaneous activity, defined as median ΔF/F during blank trials. P-values computed by permutation test. (D) Mean responses of L2/3 ROIs to CWs and adjacent whiskers within the same row (left) or the same arc (right). Lower panels: schematics of adjacent whiskers within rows or arcs on the whisker pad. (E) As in D, for L4 ROIs. Only columns containing at least 3 ROIs were included in this analysis. Because most ROIs were located in the C row, no data was available for responses to surround whiskers within the same arc but −1 row relative to the CW. Asterisks, significant difference between EN and NH. *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001.

Figure 4.

Figure 4—figure supplement 1. Response magnitude and tuning sharpness analyzed without normalization to spontaneous activity.

Figure 4—figure supplement 1.

Correlation of mean ΔF/F evoked by four weakest whiskers to four strongest whiskers within each L2/3 cell for NH (A) and EN (B). Each dot on scatter plots indicates one neuron. Red lines indicate linear regression fit. Histograms show distribution of absolute evoked response magnitude. ** denotes greater mean response for EN than NH (p=0.0002, permutation test). Note: in EN (B), one point at (0.03, 0.17) is omitted from scatter plot due to scale. Regression slope was different between NH and EN (p=1.2e-9, t-test for difference in slopes).
Figure 4—figure supplement 2. Sharpening of tuning is more prominent for L2/3 neurons overlying L4 barrels than L4 septa.

Figure 4—figure supplement 2.

(A–B) Effect of enrichment on average ranked whisker tuning curves for barrel-related (A) and septal-related (B) ROIs in L2/3. Plots as described in Figure 4A. (C–D) Fraction of whisker-responsive ROIs located over septa in L2/3 (C) or in septa in L4 (D) imaging fields. Each circle represents one imaging field. Red is population mean and SEM. P-values computed from 2-sample t-test.