Fig. 3.

Ocular dominance plasticity induces inhibitory synapses pruning. (A) Ocular dominance (OD) plasticity in adult mouse induces a loss of inhibitory synapses (green spots) from distal dendrites (preferentially innervated by thalamic inputs) in layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons in the visual cortex. (B) A representative image of a dendritic portion of a layer 2/3 pyramidal neuron electroporated with cytosolic red fluorescent protein and GFP-gephyrin (green puncta) and imaged in vivo at different time points after OD plasticity protocol. Empty arrows indicate the loss of GFP-gephyrin puncta while filled arrows indicate GFP-gephyrin puncta still present. (C) Ocular Dominance Index (OD Index) decreases significantly following OD plasticity protocol. [Modified from van Versendaal et al., 2012].