BACKGROUND During early mammalian brain development, transient neurons and circuits
form the scaffold for the development of neuronal networks. In the immature cerebral cortex …

Developing sensory circuits exhibit different patterns of spontaneous activity, patterns that
are related to the construction and refinement of functional networks. During the …

Throughout development, the brain transits from early highly synchronous activity patterns to
a mature state with sparse and decorrelated neural activity, yet the mechanisms underlying …

Sensory areas are spontaneously active in the absence of sensory stimuli. This
spontaneous activity has long been studied; however, its functional role remains largely …

Before the onset of sensory transduction, developing neural circuits spontaneously generate
correlated activity in distinct spatial and temporal patterns. During this period of patterned …

Brain connections are organized into topographic maps that are precisely aligned both
within and across modalities. This alignment facilitates coherent integration of different …

Spontaneous activity fine-tunes neuronal connections in the developing brain. To explore
the underlying synaptic plasticity mechanisms, we monitored naturally occurring changes in …

Highlights•Retinal waves drive visual circuits before the onset of visual experience.•Map
development in the midbrain, thalamus and cortex is regulated by retinal …

Synchronous neuronal activity is a hallmark of the developing brain. In the mouse cerebral
cortex, activity decorrelates during the second week of postnatal development, progressively …

The brain is programmed to drive behaviour by precisely wiring the appropriate neuronal
circuits. Wiring and rewiring of neuronal circuits largely depends on the orchestrated …