Systemic pharmacological suppression of neural activity reverses learning impairment in a mouse model of Fragile X syndrome.

The enhancement of associative synaptic plasticity often results in impaired rather than enhanced learning. Previously, we proposed that such learning impairments can result from saturation of the plasticity mechanism (Nguyen-Vu et al., 2017), or, more generally, from a history-dependent change in the threshold for plasticity.

Population calcium responses of Purkinje cells in the oculomotor cerebellum driven by nonvisual input.

The climbing fiber input to the cerebellum conveys instructive signals that can induce synaptic plasticity and learning by triggering complex spikes accompanied by large calcium transients in Purkinje cells. In the cerebellar flocculus, which supports oculomotor learning, complex spikes are driven by image motion on the retina, which could indicate an oculomotor error. In the same neurons, complex spikes also can be driven by nonvisual signals.

Arc visualization of odor objects reveals experience-dependent ensemble sharpening, separation, and merging in anterior piriform cortex in adult rat.

Visualization using the immediate early gene Arc revealed sparser and more robust odor representations in the anterior piriform cortex of adult rats when odor was associated with water reward over 2-3 d. Rewarded odor "mixtures" resulted in rats responding to either component odor similarly, and, correspondingly, the odor representations became more similar as indexed by increased overlap in piriform Arc-expressing (Arc(+)) pyramidal neurons. The increased overlap was consistent with the rats' generalization from component odors.