• D A Nicholson and J H Freeman.
• Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA.
• J. Neurosci. 2000 Nov 1; 20 (21): 8218-26.

AbstractNeuronal activity was recorded in the dorsal accessory inferior olive in infant rats during classical conditioning of the eye-blink response. The percentage and amplitude of eye-blink conditioned responses (CRs) increased as a function of age. The magnitude of the neuronal response to the unconditioned stimulus (US) decreased with age. There were also age-specific modifications of US-elicited inferior olive neuronal activity during paired trials in which a conditioned eye-blink response was performed. The results indicate that the development of the conditioned eye-blink response may depend on dynamic interactions between multiple developmental processes within the eye-blink circuitry. Differences in the functional maturity of olivo-cerebellar pathways may limit the induction of plasticity in the cerebellum and thereby limit the development of eye-blink conditioned responses.

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