A New Look at Visual System Plasticity

Reward-based learning is known to induce cortical plasticity in primary sensory areas. A new study by Goltstein, Meijer, and Pennartz [ 1 Goltstein P.M. et al. Conditioning sharpens the spatial representation of rewarded stimuli in mouse primary visual cortex. eLife. 2018; 7 e37683 Crossref PubMed Google Scholar ] ( eLife2018;7:e37683), adopting a dual-scale approach (single-unit and population level), shows how associative learning in mice tunes cortical processing, but unlike other primary sensory cortices it does not modify the retinotopic map