Physiological consequences for the cat's visual cortex of effectively restricting early visual experience with oriented contours

1978 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 896-909 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. Stryker ◽  
H. Sherk ◽  
A. G. Leventhal ◽  
H. V. Hirsch
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Preferred Orientation ◽  
Cortical Cells ◽  
Recording Session ◽  
Rule Out ◽  
Made In ◽  
Orderly Arrangement

1. The early visual experience of nine cats was restricted to viewing horizontal or vertical lines inside opaque goggles. 2. When the kittens were 3-4 mo old, extracellular recordings were made in the primary visual cortex. To obtain a representative sample of cortical cells, units were studied at regularly spaced intervals along the course of electrode penetrations traveling oblique to the cortical surface. An automated assessment of preferred orientation using a computer-driven optical display was employed, and during the recording session the experimenters did not know which orientation(s) each animal had viewed in early life. 3. In the cats that viewed horizontal lines with one eye and vertical lines with the other during rearing, two major findings of previous workers (14) were confirmed. First, a majority of units were not selective for orientation. Second, units with preferred orientations near vertical tended to be activated exclusively by the eye that had viewed vertical, and likewise for horizontal. 4. In cats that viewed lines of the same orientation with both eyes during rearing, a substantially smaller proportion of units were selective for orientation; the preferred orientations of these units also tended to match the orientation to which the cats had been exposed. 5. Portions of some electrode penetrations showed an orderly arrangement of cells according to preferred orientation similar to that seen in normal cats, but with regions over which only nonselective cells were found. Many penetrations appeared less orderly. 6. The results are consistent with a role for early visual experience in maintaining the responsiveness and innate selectivity of cortical neurons, although they cannot entirely rule out the possibility that experience may alter or determine the preferred orientation of some cells.

Role of visual experience in activating critical period in cat visual cortex

1985 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 572-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. D. Mower ◽  
W. G. Christen
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Ocular Dominance ◽  
Orientation Selectivity ◽  
Monocular Deprivation ◽  
Total Darkness ◽  
Cortical Cells ◽  
Visual Cortical ◽  
Dark Rearing ◽  
Made In

Cats were reared in total darkness from birth until 4-5 mo of age (DR cats, n = 7) or with very brief visual experience (1 or 2 days) during an otherwise similar period of dark rearing [DR(1) cats, n = 3; DR(2) cats, n = 7]. Single-cell recordings were made in area 17 of visual cortex at the end of this rearing period and/or after a subsequent prolonged period of monocular deprivation. Control observations were made in normal cats (n = 3), cats reared with monocular deprivation from birth (n = 4), and cats monocularly deprived after being reared normally until 4 mo of age (n = 2). After rearing cats in total darkness, the majority of visual cortical cells were binocularly driven and the overall distribution of ocular dominance was not different from that of normal cats. Orientation-selective cells were very rare in dark-reared cats. Monocular deprivation imposed after dark rearing resulted in selective development of connections from the open eye. Most cells were responsive only to the open eye and the majority of these were orientation selective. These results were similar to, though less severe than, those found in cats reared with monocular deprivation from birth. Monocular deprivation imposed after 4 mo of normal rearing did not produce selective development of connections from the open eye in terms of either ocular dominance or orientation selectivity. In DR(1) cats visual cortical physiology was degraded in comparison to dark-reared cats after the rearing period. Most cells were binocularly driven but there was a higher frequency of unresponsive cells and a reduced frequency of orientation-selective cells. Subsequent monocular deprivation resulted in a further decrease in the number of binocularly driven cells and an increase in unresponsive cells. However, it did not produce a bias in favor of the open eye in terms of either ocular dominance or orientation selectivity. In DR(2) cats there was a high incidence of unresponsive cells and a marked loss of binocularly driven cells after the rearing period. Subsequent monocular deprivation failed to produce any significant changes.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

scholarly journals Developmental plasticity in visual cortex is necessary for normal visuomotor integration and visuomotor skill learning

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix C Widmer ◽  
Georg B Keller
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Skill Learning ◽  
Conditional Knockout ◽  
Visuomotor Integration ◽  
Visuomotor Task ◽  
Visuomotor Skills

The experience of coupling between motor output and visual feedback is necessary for the development of visuomotor skills and shapes visuomotor integration in visual cortex. Whether these experience-dependent changes involve plasticity in visual cortex remains unclear. Here, we probed the role of NMDA receptor-dependent plasticity in mouse primary visual cortex (V1) during visuomotor development. Using a conditional knockout of NMDA receptors and a photoactivatable inhibitor of CaMKII, we locally perturbed plasticity in V1 during first visual experience, recorded neuronal activity in V1, and tested the mice in a visuomotor task. We found that perturbing plasticity before, but not after, first visuomotor experience reduces responses to unpredictable stimuli, diminishes the suppression of predictable feedback in V1, and impairs visuomotor skill learning later in life. Our results demonstrate that plasticity in the local V1 circuit during early life is critical for shaping visuomotor integration.

Direction Selectivity of Neurons in the Striate Cortex Increases as Stimulus Contrast Is Decreased

2006 ◽  
Vol 95 (4) ◽  
pp. 2705-2712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew R. Peterson ◽  
Baowang Li ◽  
Ralph D. Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Striate Cortex ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Response Characteristic ◽  
Direction Selectivity ◽  
Integration Time ◽  
Stimulus Contrast ◽  
Cortical Cells ◽  
Moving Stimulus

Various properties of external scenes are integrated during the transmission of information along central visual pathways. One basic property concerns the sensitivity to direction of a moving stimulus. This direction selectivity (DS) is a fundamental response characteristic of neurons in the visual cortex. We have conducted a neurophysiological study of cells in the visual cortex to determine how DS is affected by changes in stimulus contrast. Previous work shows that a neuron integration time is increased at low contrasts, causing temporal changes of response properties. This leads to the prediction that DS should change with stimulus contrast. However, the change could be in a counterintuitive direction, i.e., DS could increase with reduced contrast. This possibility is of intrinsic interest but it is also of potential relevance to recent behavioral work in which human subjects exhibit increased DS as contrast is reduced. Our neurophysiological results are consistent with this finding, i.e., the degree of DS of cortical neurons is inversely related to stimulus contrast. Temporal phase differences of inputs to cortical cells may account for this result.

scholarly journals Diversity of feature selectivity in macaque visual cortex arising from limited number of broadly-tuned input channels

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yamni S. Mohan ◽  
Jaikishan Jayakumar ◽  
Errol K.J. Lloyd ◽  
Ekaterina Levichkina ◽  
Trichur R. Vidyasagar
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Cortical Cells ◽  
Thalamic Input ◽  
Feature Selectivity ◽  
The One ◽  
Visual Cortical ◽  
Orientation Domain ◽  
Preferred Stimulus

AbstractSpikes (action potential) responses of most primary visual cortical cells in the macaque are sharply tuned for the orientation of a line or an edge and neurons preferring similar orientations are clustered together in cortical columns. The preferred stimulus orientation of these columns span the full range of orientations, as observed in recordings of spikes, which represent the outputs of cortical neurons. However, when we imaged also the thalamic input to these cells that occur on a larger spatial scale, we found that the orientation domain map of the primary visual cortex did not show the diversity of orientations exhibited by signals representing outputs of the cells. This map was dominated by just the one orientation that is most commonly represented in subcortical responses. This supports cortical feature selectivity and columnar architecture being built upon feed-forward signals transmitted from the thalamus in a very limited number of broadly-tuned input channels.

Physiological studies of visual cortex reorganization following cortical deafferentation in neonatal cats

1995 ◽  
Vol 73 (9) ◽  
pp. 1378-1388 ◽  
Author(s):  
U. Yinon ◽  
R. Shemesh ◽  
H. Arda ◽  
M. Rosner ◽  
P. P. Jaros
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Ocular Dominance ◽  
Medial Part ◽  
Middle Zone ◽  
Cortical Cells ◽  
Unit Recording ◽  
Functional Reorganization ◽  
Physiological Studies ◽  
Made In

Whether restoration takes place in the visual cortex of neonates was physiologically studied in cortical cells of cats following their deafferentation. Deafferentation was performed by a parasagittal incision made in the visual cortex, separating the medial part of it from the thalamocortical and other visual fibers. Responsiveness (percentage of responsive cells) in the middle zone (the middle sector along the cortical incision) of the deafferented region was 82.5%, compared with 91.7% in the afferented (lateral to the incision) region (p = 0.5). In comparison, the responsiveness level was 32.3 and 81.3% (p < 0.05) in the respective zones of the similarly deafferented adult controls. The ocular dominance distribution and binocularity were almost normal in the deafferented region of the neonatally operated cats, whereas binocularity was remarkably diminished in the adult controls. Recovery was also found in the specificity of the cells to orientation and direction in the neonatally operated cats, but not in the adult-operated cats. Thus, functional reorganization of the columnar organizations takes place in the neonatally deafferented but not in the adult-operated cats.Key words: visual cortex, neonatal cats, deafferentation, unit recording, responsiveness.

Changes in Volume of Cortical Neuronal Elements During Asphyxiation

1957 ◽  
Vol 191 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Van Harreveld
Keyword(s):  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Cortical Cells ◽  
Resistance Change ◽  
Volume Increase ◽  
Cortical Volume ◽  
Transport Of Ions ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Apical Dendrites ◽  
Ionic Movements ◽  
Made In

Cortical electrical resistance increases considerably after cortical asphyxiation. After a latent period of about 3 minutes a sudden resistance change occurs during which one-third of the cortical conductivity may be lost. It was postulated that this drop in conductance is due to a transport of ions, accompanied by water, from the extracellular spaces into the cortical cells and fibers. A swelling of cortical elements must thus be expected. The cortex was quickly frozen either before or after the sudden conductivity drop. The frozen cortex was kept in alcohol for 1 week during which the alcohol dissolves the ice in the cortex and fixes the tissue. Histological preparations stained with gallocyanin and with silver for the investigation of cells and fibers respectively were made. In rabbit cortex the mean diameter of nerve cells after the sudden conductivity drop was more than 11% greater than before the resistance change, which represents a volume increase of about 40%. The apical dendrites increased in diameter about 30% implying a volume increase of about 70%. If one assumes that the combined perikaryal and dendritic volume is 30% of the total cortical volume, then the amount of fluid stored by the cortical neurons during the sudden resistance change would amount to about 16% of the cortical volume. Such fluid and ionic movements are ample to explain the resistance changes observed.

Cholinergic and noradrenergic afferents influence the functional properties of the postnatal visual cortex in rats

1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 1015-1028 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROSITA SICILIANO ◽  
FRANCESCO FORNAI ◽  
IRENE BONACCORSI ◽  
LUCIANO DOMENICI ◽  
PAOLA BAGNOLI
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Functional Properties ◽  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Ocular Dominance ◽  
Field Size ◽  
Cortical Cells ◽  
Visual Cortical ◽  
Na Depletion

Based on previous evidence that acetylcholine (ACh) and noradrenaline (NA) play a permissive role in developmental plasticity in the kitten visual cortex, we reinvestigated this topic in the postnatal visual cortex of rats with normal vision. In rats, the functional properties of visual cortical cells develop gradually between the second and the sixth postnatal week (Fagiolini et al., 1994). Cortical cholinergic depletion, by basal forebrain (BF) lesions at postnatal day (PD) 15 (eye opening), leads to a transient disturbance in the distribution of ocular dominance (Siciliano et al., 1997). In the present study, we investigated the development of visual cortical response properties following cytotoxic lesions of the locus coeruleus (LC) alone or in combination with lesions of cholinergic BF. The main result is that early NA depletion impairs the orientation selectivity of cortical neurons, causes a slight increase of their receptive-field size, and reduces the signal-to-noise ratio of cell responses. Similar effects are obtained following NA depletion in adult animals, although the effects of adult noradrenergic deafferentation are significantly more severe than those obtained after early NA depletion. Additional cholinergic depletion causes an additional transient change in ocular-dominance distribution similarly to that obtained after cholinergic deafferentation alone. Comparisons between depletion of NA on the one hand and depletion of both NA and ACh on the other suggest that the effects of combined deafferentation on the functional properties studied result from simple linear addition of the effects of depleting each afferent system alone.

Effects of cholinergic depletion on neuron activities in the cat visual cortex

1987 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 781-794 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Sato ◽  
Y. Hata ◽  
K. Hagihara ◽  
T. Tsumoto
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Response Magnitude ◽  
Nucleus Basalis ◽  
Visual Responses ◽  
Cortical Cells ◽  
Contralateral Cortex ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Mean Current ◽  
Cholinergic Projection

1. Unilateral lesions of the nucleus basalis magnocellularis (nBM), a source of cholinergic projection to the cerebral cortex, were produced by injection of kainic acid in the cat. The lesions caused a significant reduction in density of choline acetyltransferase-immunoreactive terminals in the visual cortex ipsilateral to the lesions. 2. In the primary visual cortex ipsilateral to the lesions [acetylcholine (ACh)-depleted cortex], about half of the cells had weak or undetectable visual responses, whereas in the contralateral visual cortex almost all the cells had normal responsivity. The response selectivity, such as orientation and direction selectivities, of cortical cells was not affected by the depletion of ACh. 3. The microionophoretic application of ACh to cells under observation facilitated visual responses in 83% of the cells recorded from the ACh-depleted cortex, whereas it suppressed the responses in only 9%. The application of a muscarinic antagonist, atropine, to cells in the ACh-depleted cortex was ineffective, suggesting no residual ACh activity. 4. The mean current required to induce facilitation in the cortex ipsilateral to the lesion was significantly smaller than that required in the contralateral cortex and the visual cortex of the normal cat, suggesting a supersensitivity of receptors mediating the effect or a reduction in catabolism of exogenous ACh in the ACh-depleted cortex. 5. More than half of the cells that had been unresponsive to visual stimuli became clearly responsive during the ACh application. The response magnitude of cortical cells, as a whole, increased to the same degree as that observed during the ACh application in the normal cat. 6. In addition to the decrease in the average response magnitude, there was a remarkable variability in responses of cells to motion of the slit from sweep to sweep in the ACh-depleted cortex. The application of ACh to cortical cells decreased the variability of responses and consequently made the responses much more consistent. 7. These results suggest that without ACh supplied from the nBM, most of the cortical neurons could not respond briskly and consistently to excitatory inputs and that exogenously applied ACh could reverse such an impairment of cortical neurons through intact or even supersensitive postsynaptic receptors.

Responses of Neurons in Neonatal Cortex and Thalamus to Patterned Visual Stimulation Through the Naturally Closed Lids

2001 ◽  
Vol 85 (4) ◽  
pp. 1436-1443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristine Krug ◽  
Colin J. Akerman ◽  
Ian D. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Spontaneous Activity ◽  
Neuronal Activity ◽  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Striate Cortex ◽  
Visual Stimulation ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Visual Responses ◽  
Eye Opening

In studies of the developing mammalian visual system, it has been axiomatic that visual experience begins with eye-opening. Any role for neuronal activity earlier in development has been attributed to the patterned spontaneous activity found in retina and lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN). Here we show that, as early as 2 wk before eye-opening, visual stimuli presented through the closed eyelids can drive neuronal activity in LGN and striate cortex of the ferret. At this age, spontaneous activity in cortex is much lower than in LGN, and the visual responses of many cortical, but not geniculate, neurons depend on the orientation of a moving grating. Furthermore the selectivity of cortical neurons to the orientation of gratings presented through the closed eyelids improves with age. Thus neuronal activity patterned by visual experience, rather than by spontaneous retinal activity, is present in visual cortex much earlier than previously thought. This could have important implications for the self-organization of visual cortex.

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