Post eye-opening maturation of visual receptive field diameters in the superior colliculus of normal- and dark-reared rats.
When the rat's eyes open (P14) the retino-collicular projection is largely mature but the cortico-collicular afferents are naive and mature considerably in the following week. At P14, single units in the superior colliculus' superficial grey layer (SGS) had discrete receptive fields (RFs) (diameter = 15 +/- 1.6 degrees) which expanded with age, reaching 30 +/- 2.6 degrees at P21, possibly reflecting the increasing influence of the visual cortex, whose RFs are known to be enlarged at P21. Subsequently SGS RFs retracted to 13 +/- 1.3 degrees by P23. Dark-reared (DR) rats followed a similar but delayed developmental pattern, such that RFs were still large (27 +/- 3.4 degrees) at P24. By P30 however the RFs of DR rats were the same as those of normal adults. Thus visual experience accelerates the emergence of normal RFs in the SGS.
Binns
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KE
Dept. Visual Science, Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, UK. K.Binns@UCL.ac.uk
Salt
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D000818:Animals; D003624:Darkness; D008029:Lighting; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity / Q000502:physiology; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D012160:Retina / Q000254:growth & development / Q000502:physiology; D013477:Superior Colliculi / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000502:physiology; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology