Barrel Cortex As An Experimental System
The barrel cortex of the rodent has proved to be a fruitful model system for investigating plasticity in primary somatosensory cortex (S1). There are several reasons for its popularity (adapted from Feldman and Brecht, 2005 ):
- The barrel cortex contains an orderly map which corresponds with the arrangement of the facial whiskers.
- The cortical representations of the whiskers correspond one-to-one with barrel structures which are visible under the microscope even in unstained slices.
- Barrel cortex is superficially located and so amenable to in vivo investigation.
- Sensory deprivation, by trimming or plucking of whiskers, or stimulation, by whisker vibration, is easy to arrange experimentally.
- The use of transgenic mice allows genetic and molecular mechanisms of plasticity to be investigated.
- Barrel columns are a specialized example of cortical columns, which are believed to be an important feature of cortical functional organization, suggesting that results from barrel cortex may be generally applicable to the rest of the sensory cortex.
Read more about this topic: Barrel Cortex
Famous quotes containing the words barrel, experimental and/or system:
“I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch ... and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order ... by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.”
—Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen] (1885–1962)
“The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is based on induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)
“We now come to the grand law of the system in which we are placed, as it has been developed by the experience of our race, and that, in one word, is SACRIFICE!”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)