Adult cortical plasticity studied with chronically implanted electrode arrays

The functional architecture of adult cerebral cortex retains a capacity for experience-dependent change. This is seen after focal binocular lesions as rapid changes in receptive field (RF) of the lesion projection zone (LPZ) in the primary visual cortex (V1). To study the dynamics of the circuitry underlying these changes longitudinally, we implanted microelectrode arrays in macaque (Macaca mulatta) V1, eliminating the possibility of sampling bias, which was a concern in previous studies. With this method, we observed a rapid initial recovery in the LPZ and, during the following weeks, 63-89% of the sites in the LPZ showed recovery of visual responses with significant position tuning. The RFs shifted ∼3° away from the scotoma. In the absence of a lesion, visual stimulation surrounding an artificial scotoma did not elicit visual responses, suggesting that the postlesion RF shifts resulted from cortical reorganization. Interestingly, although both spikes and LFPs gave consistent prelesion position tuning, only spikes reflected the postlesion remapping.