EN
Sensory deprivation elicits alterations in the functional organization of the primary somatosensory cortex. It was shown that plucking out all but one row of whiskers in adult mice evokes broadening of the functional representation of the spared row, as measured with radioactive 2-deoxyglucose (2-DG) uptake during passive stimulation of whiskers. We would like to establish whether changes in metabolic activity caused by sensory deprivation are paralleled by changes at genomic levels visualized by immediate early genes immunohistochemistry Exploration of enriched environment is a powerful trigger to induce immediate early genes in the barrel cortex. In this study we show that plasticity of the functional representation of the spared row of whiskers can be estimated by radioactive 2-DG method in animals actively using their whiskers while exploring new environment. Expansion of the spared row representation in the deprived hemisphere reaches 140% of the control (non-deprived) hemisphere after 1 week of deprivation and spreads to whole barrel fi eld after four weeks of deprivation. We also show that induction of some early immediate genes during exploration of new environment is limited to the non-deprived barrels after one day of deprivation. In further course of studies we will perform immunohistochemical reactions for proteins encoded by early immediate genes in brains from animals deprived for 1 or 4 weeks.