Plasticity of the Functional Connectivity Between Barrel-Columns in the Rat Somatosensory Cortex

This thesis concerns the neuronal activity patterns evoked in somatosensory cortex by deflection of the whiskers in lightly anesthetized rats. The relation of activity patterns to the well known columnar organization of the rat cortex is of particular interest. After an analysis of the patterns of activity present in normal rats (Chapter 2), a variety of special circumstances are evaluated to find out how cortical responses to whisker movement are influenced by preceding sensory experience: • 3-day periods of whisker pairing in freely-moving rats (Chapter 3); • 50-min periods of conditioning in anesthetized rats (Chapter 4 ); • Extended periods of altered sensory-motor experience in developing rats (Chapter 5).