Bart C. Jongbloets

Chui Kong1,2 Yangzhen Wang1,3 Guihua Xiao1,3,4* 1School of Information Science and Technology, Fudan University, Shanghai, China 2Department of Communication Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, China 3Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China 4BNRist, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China Introduction: The visual cortex is a key region in the mouse brain, responsible for processing visual information.

Introduction Pavlovian fear conditioning is one of the most used behavioral paradigms, which serves as a model to study the basic cellular and circuit mechanisms underlying associated learning in neural networks. In this paradigm, an aversive stimulus (unconditioned stimulus, US) is presented together with a cue (conditioned stimulus, CS), resulting in a formed association between these signals wherein the animal learns that the cue (i.e., the CS) predicts the US.

Highlights • Chronic in vivo imaging of excitatory shaft synapses via endogenous PSD-95 labeling • Synaptic weights are log normally distributed on PV+ and pyramidal neurons • PV+ synapses are more stable and less heterogeneous than pyramidal synapses • Synaptic weight distributions are intrinsically set by cell-type-specific dynamics Summary Cortical function relies on the balanced activation of excitatory and inhibitory neurons.