In 10 mice, equal mouse weights reduced the early binocular response correlation rise from 0.051 to 0.007 in 81 fixed spine pairs

We tested whether the early rise in nearby spine response correlation persists when both spine identities stay fixed. We used the released tracked calcium data of Tsimring and colleagues from mouse binocular visual cortex. Three source correlation checks recovered nearest-neighbor identities for 94.6% of recorded observations. The source screen gave exactly 364 early and 480 later focal spines. We found 81 unordered pairs from 10 mice that kept the same nearest relation from day 1 to day 5. Their distances were below 5 micrometres on both days. Their pooled binocular response correlation rose by 0.051. With equal mouse weights, the mean rise was 0.007, with a 95% mouse bootstrap interval from -0.071 to 0.082. Removing each stimulus mean gave 0.006 [-0.065, 0.079]. Five mice had positive raw changes and five had negative changes. Two mice supplied 36 of the 81 pairs and both had large positive changes. We also compared 202 focal records with surviving original neighbors. Changing the later neighbor choice altered the mean change by 0.001 [-0.017, 0.020]. Thus, neighbor choice did not clearly explain the early increase in that subset. Later fixed pairs and secondary controls also had wide mouse-level uncertainty. This selected sample does not establish a common early correlation rise across mice. It allows modest positive changes and does not reject local plasticity. The package preserves code, compact input, checked pair identities, figures, provenance, and repeat instructions.

dendritic spines · structure and function · visual cortex · development · calcium imaging · trial correlation · mouse weights · reproducibility