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SUMMARY How experiences during development cause long-lasting changes in sensory circuits and affect behavior in mature animals is poorly understood. Here we establish a novel system for mechanistic analysis of the plasticity of developing neural circuits by showing that sensory experience during development alters nociceptive behavior and circuit physiology in Drosophila larvae. Despite the convergence of nociceptive and mechanosensory inputs on common second-order neurons (SONs), developmental noxious input modifies transmission from nociceptors to their SONs but not from mechanosensors to the same SONs, which suggests striking sensory-pathway specificity. These SONs activate serotonergic neurons to inhibit nociceptor-to-SON transmission; stimulation of nociceptors during development sensitizes nociceptor presynapses to this feedback inhibition. Our results demonstrate that unlike associative learning, which involves inputs from two sensory pathways, sensory-pathway-specific plasticity in the Drosophila nociceptive circuit is in part established through feedback modulation. This study elucidates a novel mechanism that enables pathway-specific plasticity in sensory systems.

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During laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC), misidentification of the cystic duct, which causes major bile duct injuries, can result from wrong or incomplete dissection of Calot's triangle. Therefore, the critical view of safety has been accepted as a safe method for gaining a sufficient view of Calot's triangle before transecting the cystic duct. However, even in cases without aberrant anatomy of the bile duct, bile duct injury can occur by a wrong approach to a critical view of safety. Additionally, in cases of badly inflamed gallbladders, it is often hard to achieve a critical view of safety, because Calot's triangle is often solid and cannot be expanded. In our standardized procedure, which is based on exposing the inner layer of the subserosal layer (the ss-i layer), the critical view of safety can be safely achieved. We have safely performed LC, using our standardized procedure, for many cases with cholecystitis with highly inflamed gallbladders. In this article, focusing especially on prevention of bile duct injuries, we present our standardized procedure to achieve the critical view of safety along with histological findings.

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