Whisker row deprivation affects the flow of sensory information through rat barrel cortex

Whisker trimming causes substantial reorganisation of neuronal response properties in barrel cortex. However, little is known about experience-dependent rerouting of sensory processing following sensory deprivation. To address this, we performed in vivo intracellular recordings from L2/3, L4, L5-regular-spiking (L5RS), and L5-intrinsic-bursting (L5IB) neurones and measured their multi-whisker receptive field at the level of spiking activity, membrane potential and synaptic conductance before and after sensory deprivation. We used Chernoff information to quantify the "sensory information" contained in the firing patterns of cells in response to spared and deprived whisker stimulation. In the control condition, information for flanking row and same row whiskers decreased in the order L4, L2/3, L5IB, L5RS. However, after whisker-row deprivation, spared flanking row whisker information was reordered to L4, L5RS, L5IB, L2/3. Sensory information from the trimmed whiskers was reduced and delayed in L2/3 and L5IB neurones while sensory information from spared whiskers was increased and advanced in L4 and L5RS neurones. Sensory information from spared whiskers was increased in L5IB neurones without a latency change. L5RS cells exhibited the largest changes in sensory information content through an atypical plasticity combining a significant decrease in spontaneous activity and an increase in a short latency excitatory conductance