Prolonged visual deprivation in adults induces non-homeostatic plasticity of feed-forward excitation from visual thalamus to cortex

Age constrains plasticity at inputs from first order thalamic nuclei to the cortex, endowing stability to ascending, feed-forward projections. However, here we show that prolonged visual deprivation can induce robust and reversible plasticity at thalamocortical synapses in layer 4 pyramidal neurons in the adult mouse primary visual cortex. The plasticity engaged by prolonged visual deprivation is non-homeostatic and mediated by changes in presynaptic function.