Postnatal Ablation of Synaptic Retinoic Acid Signaling Impairs Cortical Information Processing and Sensory Discrimination in Mice

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
Esther ParkLu Chen

Abstract

Retinoic acid (RA) and its receptors (RARs) are well established essential transcriptional regulators during embryonic development. Recent findings in cultured neurons identified an independent and critical post-transcriptional role of RA and RARα in the homeostatic regulation of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission in mature neurons. However, the functional relevance of synaptic RA signaling in vivo has not been established. Here, using somatosensory cortex as a model system and the RARα conditional knock-out mouse as a tool, we applied multiple genetic manipulations to delete RARα postnatally in specific populations of cortical neurons, and asked whether synaptic RA signaling observed in cultured neurons is involved in cortical information processing in vivo Indeed, conditional ablation of RARα in mice via a CaMKIIα-Cre or a layer 5-Cre driver line or via somatosensory cortex-specific viral expression of Cre-recombinase impaired whisker-dependent texture discrimination, suggesting a critical requirement of RARα expression in L5 pyramidal neurons of somatosensory cortex for normal tactile sensory processing. Transcranial two-photon imaging revealed a significant increase in dendritic spine elimination on apical dend...Continue Reading

Citations

Sep 24, 2020·Annual Review of Nutrition·Marta U Wołoszynowska-FraserPeter McCaffery
Sep 24, 2020·British Journal of Pharmacology·Regina HummelMichael K E Schäfer

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