Chronic and Acute Manipulation of Cortical Glutamate Transmission Induces Structural and Synaptic Changes in Co-cultured Striatal Neurons.

In contrast to the prenatal topographic development of sensory cortices, striatal circuit organization is slow and requires the functional maturation of cortical and thalamic excitatory inputs throughout the first postnatal month. While mechanisms regulating synapse development and plasticity are quite well described at excitatory synapses of glutamatergic neurons in the neocortex, comparatively little is known of how this translates to glutamate synapses onto GABAergic neurons in the striatum. Here we investigate excitatory striatal synapse plasticity in an system, where glutamate can be studied in isolation from dopamine and other neuromodulators.