Development & Plasticity in Sensory Thalamus & Cortex is based on a 2-day symposium offered for the first time at SFN 2003. The symposium focused on the latest findings and ideas, focusing on visual and somatosensory thalamus and neocortex in rodents and carnivores and functional imaging studies in developing and aging human neocortex, as well as plastic changes after spinal cord injury. This volume will cover recent advances in understanding sensory thalamic and cortical function, organization, and plasticity. Chapters will cover a broad range of approaches from single cell recordings to viral gene transfer to transgenic and knockout mouse models to functional imaging in human cortex. The text is intended to provide an update on the multitude of technical and experimental approaches in understanding the development and plasticity of the mammalian sensory thalamus and neocortex and provide a synthetic theoretical framework for future studies.
Our brain evolved in a manner to enable itself to modify its structure depending on its environment. The thalamus is a large sensory relay station and it is closely integrated into the cortical circuits. Thalamic projections are responsible for dispatching most of the information to the cortex from the sensory periphery from early stages throughout life. The earliest inputs to the cortex are capable of constituting an extrinsic signal that plays a part in triggering other changes in the establishing cortical circuitry, leading to some aspects of specific regional differentiation and a real specializations. Unravelling the mechanism by which developing thalamic axons interact with the forming cortical circuitry in their target regions is important in understanding how cortical organization is determined. This book intends to bring together systems and molecular approaches on various fundamental issues on thalamocortical development and plasticity. Functional cortical circuits cannot be appreciated without thalamocortical circuits and cortical development cannot be considered without thalamocortical pathway development. The 16 chapters address key questions with diversity of techniques; ranging from molecular genetics, in vitro and in vivo methods to classical anatomical, electrophysiological and imaging procedures. The conceptual approaches formulated in these chapters should be a rich source for future research in this area.
