Sleep enhances plasticity in the developing visual cortex

During a critical period of brain development, occluding the vision of one eye causes a rapid remodeling of the visual cortex and its inputs. Sleep ha s been linked to other processes thought to depend on synaptic remodeling, but a role for sleep in this form of cortical plasticity has not been demon strated. We found that sleep enhanced the effects of a preceding period of monocular deprivation on Visual cortical responses, but wakefulness in comp lete darkness did not do so. The enhancement of plasticity by sleep was at least as great as that produced by an equal amount of additional deprivatio n. These findings demonstrate that sleep and sleep loss modify experience-d ependent cortical plasticity in vivo. They suggest that sleep in early life may play a crucial role in brain development.