Changes in the dynamics of sleep electroencephalogram in rat barrel cortex associated with long-term sensory deprivation

In this paper, we investigate how somatosensory deprivations affect the electroencephalogram (EEG) dynamics during sleep, which might be caused by alternations of neural organizations. Under the condition that the whiskers of rats were cut unilaterally, the resulting change in balance between EEG spectral powers in the intact and the sense-deprived barrel cortices was traced for a month. Both the δ- and θ-band spectral powers of EEG in the sense-deprived barrel cortex initially decreased in terms of their ratio to the intact. Subsequently, the ratio was restored to the control level. The resulting change in EEG dynamics is expected to be caused by a neural re-organization associated with long-term sensory deprivation. However, non-monotonic change in the EEG dynamics could not simply be attributed to the unbalanced usage of the sensory system.