title: [Aging affects on the response irregularity of cells in different visual areas of cats].
abstract: In this research, we compared the visual neuron responses for LGN, A18 and PMLS of old and young cats with extracellular single-neuron recording techniques. We used firing rate vector to characterize information, and response irregularity of cells to evaluate the degeneration of visual characters. Response irregularity is characterized by means of the two coefficients of variation of firing rate vectors: Cv and Cv2. We found that there was no significant change of the response irregularity in LGN areas during the aging process from young to old cats. But in the other two areas, neurons of old cats exhibited significantly larger response irregularity than those of young cats. The result indicated that the information processing function of advanced visual cortex was impaired by aging. This result also provids a reference for the research of the other neuronal system changes during aging process.
authors.affiliation: Vision Research Laboratory, School of Life Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027, China.
authors.forename: Baozhuo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Zhimo
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.forename: Zhen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.forename: Zhengchun
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Nini
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.forename: Zhiguo
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Yifeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D002415:Cats; D009431:Neural Conduction; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*