Title: Experience-dependent loss of cross-modal plasticity in mouse visual cortex
Description: We perceive the world through sensory experience. Sensory information is registered and processed by our brain in a modality specific fashion. Interestingly, studies have shown that the visual cortex of early but not late blind subjects is able to respond to touch or sound (Sadato et al., 1996; Buchel et al., 1998; Weeks et al., 2000; Gougoux et al., 2009). Here, we investigated whether sensory parcellation in adult cortex is innate or is acquired during early postnatal life in an experience-dependent manner. Furthermore, we studied the anatomical substrates and molecular pathways possibly involved in cross-modal activation and its plasticity.