Publications by authors named "Rene van Dorland"
Article Synopsis
- Sensory-driven activities are crucial for forming sensory cortex connections in early life, prompting investigation into the role of social play in developing the prefrontal cortex (PFC).
- Young male rats deprived of social play during its peak period showed decreased inhibitory synapses and relied on simpler cognitive strategies in adulthood, indicating impaired PFC development.
- One hour of daily play during the deprivation period helped improve behavioral performance but did not fully restore the lost inhibitory synapses, highlighting the importance of unrestricted social play for cognitive skills and synaptic health.
Changes in inhibitory connections are essential for experience-dependent circuit adaptations. Defects in inhibitory synapses are linked to neurodevelopmental disorders, but the molecular processes underlying inhibitory synapse formation are not well understood. Here we use high-resolution two-photon microscopy in organotypic hippocampal slices from GAD65-GFP mice of both sexes to examine the signaling pathways induced by the postsynaptic signaling molecule Semaphorin4D (Sema4D) during inhibitory synapse formation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuring development, activity-dependent synaptic plasticity refines neuronal networks with high precision. For example, spontaneous activity helps sorting synaptic inputs with similar activity patterns into clusters to enhance neuronal computations in the mature brain. Here, we show that TrkB activation and postsynaptic brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) are required for synaptic clustering in developing hippocampal neurons.
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