Critical period
Spine motility

Dendritic spine motility is the altering of the dendritic morphology of a neuron, specifically the appearing and disappearing of the small protrusions known as spines. In early postnatal development, spine motility has been found to be at very high levels. Due to its most pronounced occurrence during postnatal days 11 through 15, spine motility is thought to have a role in neurogenesis. Motility levels significantly decrease before the start of the visual cortex critical period and monocular deprivation experiments show that motility levels steadily decrease until the critical period is over, hinting that motility might not be explicitly involved in this process. However, binocular deprivation before eye-opening resulted in a significant up-regulation of spine motility until the peak of the critical period, resulting in controversial findings regarding the role of dendritic spine motility.
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