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Progress in activity-dependent structural plasticity of neural circuits in cortex
RAO, Xiao-Ping; XU, Zhi-Xiang & XU, Fu-Qiang
Abstract
Neural circuits of mammalian cerebral cortex have exhibited amazing abilities of structural and functional
plasticity in development, learning and memory, neurological and psychiatric diseases. With the new imaging techniques
and the application of molecular biology methods, observation neural circuits’ structural dynamics within the cortex in
vivo at the cellular and synaptic level was possible, so there were many great progresses in the field of the
activity-dependent structural plasticity over the past decade. This paper reviewed some of the aspects of the experimental
results, focused on the characteristics of dendritic structural plasticity in individual growth and development, rich
environment, sensory deprivation, and pathological conditions, as well as learning and memory, especially the dynamics
of dendritic spines on morphology and quantity; after that, we introduced axonal structural plasticity, the molecular and
cellular mechanisms of structural plasticity, and proposed some future problems to be solved at last.
Keywords
Neural circuits; Plasticity; Imaging techniques; Growth and development; Rich environment; Sensory deprivation; Pathological conditions; Learning and memory; Dendritic structural plasticity; Dendritic spine; Axonal structural plasticity; Molecular and cellular mechanism
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