Developmental plasticity in visual cortex is necessary for normal visuomotor integration and visuomotor skill learning

The experience of coupling between motor output and visual feedback is necessary for the development of visuomotor skills and shapes visuomotor integration in visual cortex. Whether these experience-dependent changes involve plasticity in visual cortex remains unclear. Here, we probed the role of NMDA receptor-dependent plasticity in mouse primary visual cortex (V1) during visuomotor development. Using a conditional knockout of NMDA receptors and a photoactivatable inhibitor of CaMKII, we locally perturbed plasticity in V1 during first visual experience, recorded neuronal activity in V1, and tested the mice in a visuomotor task. We found that perturbing plasticity before, but not after, first visuomotor experience reduces responses to unpredictable stimuli, diminishes the suppression of predictable feedback in V1, and impairs visuomotor skill learning later in life. Our results demonstrate that plasticity in the local V1 circuit during early life is critical for shaping visuomotor integration. *** Dear reader, please note this manuscript is formatted in a standard submission format, and all statistical information is provided in Table S1. *** O_TBL View this table: org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@4a9283org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1d903beorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@84b2f8org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1d4c5org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@37d9b8_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_TBL O_FLOATNOTable S1.C_FLOATNO O_TABLECAPTIONStatistics All values are rounded to two significant decimals, except values smaller than 10-5. The tests used, were two-sample independent t-test (t-test 2), one sample t-test (t-test 1), or a bootstrap estimate of the 95% confidence interval (CI). C_TABLECAPTION C_TBL