From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2008-10-25 19:06:47 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Abstract
To: fhl <ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com>
The importance of watching motion early on for proper visual
development in ferrets.
BEGIN QUOTE
Nature. 2008 Oct 22. [Epub ahead of print]
Experience with moving visual stimuli drives the early development of
cortical direction selectivity.
Li Y, Van Hooser SD, Mazurek M, White LE, Fitzpatrick D.
[1] Department of Neurobiology, Duke University School of Medicine,
[2] These authors contributed equally to this work.
The onset of vision occurs when neural circuits in the visual cortex
are immature, lacking both the full complement of connections and the
response selectivity that defines functional maturity. Direction-
selective responses are particularly vulnerable to the effects of
early visual deprivation, but it remains unclear how stimulus-driven
neural activity guides the emergence of cortical direction
selectivity. Here we report observations from a motion training
protocol that allowed us to monitor the impact of experience on the
development of direction-selective responses in visually naive
ferrets. Using intrinsic signal imaging techniques, we found that
training with a single axis of motion induced the rapid emergence of
direction columns that were confined to cortical regions
preferentially activated by the training stimulus. Using two-photon
calcium imaging techniques, we found that single neurons in visually
naive animals exhibited weak directional biases and lacked the strong
local coherence in the spatial organization of direction preference
that was evident in mature animals. Training with a moving stimulus,
but not with a flashed stimulus, strengthened the direction-selective
responses of individual neurons and preferentially reversed the
direction biases of neurons that deviated from their neighbours. Both
effects contributed to an increase in local coherence. We conclude
that early experience with moving visual stimuli drives the rapid
emergence of direction-selective responses in the visual cortex.
PMID: 18946471
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Sukie (not a vet)
Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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