Main description:

Neuroscience has long been focused on understanding neural plasticity in both development and adulthood. Experimental work in this area has focused almost entirely on plasticity at excitatory synapses. A growing body of evidence suggests that plasticity at inhibitory GABAergic and glycinergic synapses is of critical importance during both development and aging.

The book brings together the work of researchers investigating inhibitory plasticity at many levels of analysis and in several different preparations. This topic is of wide relevance across a number of different areas of research in neuroscience and neurology. Medical problems such as epilepsy, mental illness, drug abuse, and movement disorders can result from malfunctioning inhibitory circuits. Further, the maturation of inhibitory circuits may trigger the onset of critical periods of neural circuit plasticity, raising the possibility that such plastici periods could be reactivated for medical benefit by manipulating inhibitory circuitry.

Contents:

The Origins and Specification of Cortical Interneurons.- Role of Spontaneous Activity in the Maturation of GABAergic Synapses in Embryonic Spinal Circuits.- Regulation of Inhibitory Synapse Function in the Developing Auditory CNS.- Developmental Plasticity of Inhibitory Receptive Field Properties in the Auditory and Visual Systems.- Postnatal Maturation and Experience-Dependent Plasticity of Inhibitory Circuits in Barrel Cortex.- GABAergic Transmission and Neuronal Network Events During Hippocampal Development.- Endocannabinoids and Inhibitory Synaptic Plasticity in Hippocampus and Cerebellum.- Interneuron Pathophysiologies: Paths to Neurodevelopmental Disorders.