Fast-spiking interneurons have an initial orientation bias that is lost with vision

We find that following eye opening fast-spiking parvalbumin-positive GABAergic interneurons in mice have well-defined orientation tuning preferences and that subsequent visual experience broadens this tuning. Broad inhibitory tuning is not required for the developmental sharpening of excitatory tuning, but does precede binocular matching of orientation tuning. We propose that the experience-dependent broadening of inhibition is a novel candidate for opening the critical period.