Does dendritic growth underly recovery from neonatal occipital lesions in rats.
Rats were given lesions of visual cortex on postnatal day 4 or 10, or in adulthood. Ninety days later they were trained on a horizontal-vertical stripes discrimination task and a visual-spatial navigation task. None of the operated rats acquired the tasks. The brains were processed for Golgi-Cox staining and dendritic arborization was quantified in the layer III pyramidal cells in somatosensory cortex. Relative to normal control brains, the neurons of the day 4 and adult operates showed a reduction in dendritic branching, whereas the neurons of the day 10 operates had a significant increase in dendritic arborization. This arborization may be related to enhanced somatosensory function but does not support recovery of visually-guided behavior.
Kolb
B
B
Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, Canada. Kolb@HG.ULETH.CA
Ladowski
R
R
Gibb
R
R
Gorny
G
G
D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002541:Cerebral Decortication; D003712:Dendrites / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D004924:Escape Reaction / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006120:Grooming / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D009416:Nerve Regeneration / Q000502:physiology*; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity / Q000502:physiology*; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D051381:Rats; D012683:Sensory Deprivation / Q000502:physiology; D013003:Somatosensory Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D014738:Vibrissae / Q000294:innervation; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*