Electrophysiological properties of V1 neurons in mice during postnatal development.

Recently, the electrophysiological receptive field (RF) properties of neurons in the primary visual cortex V1 of the nocturnal adult mouse have been described. These RF properties correspond well with those of more visual species such as cats and monkeys, especially with respect to orientation selectivity and temporal frequency. The selectivity of mouse neurons for spatial frequency as well as RF size is similar to that in cats and monkeys as well, but for a scaling factor as spatial frequency is much lower in mice whereas RF size is much larger. While these data indicate that similar structural and physiological mechanisms underlie the formation of these RF properties, noting is known about the developmental mechanism underlying RF formation in mice. With this project we want to analyze and describe the postnatal development of the RF properties in mouse visual cortex to unravel these developmental mechanisms. Therefore, we will determine orientation, spatial frequency, temporal frequency, contrast and size tuning in mice of different ages, as well as analyze the RF subunits of adult and young mice using local spectral reverse correlation (LSRC). This will be performed by introducing tungsten-in-glass microelectrodes into V1 and recording the action potentials of the encountered neurons following visual stimulation.

Keywords:Receptive field, Development, Visual cortex, Microelectrode, Electrophysiology, Mouse

Disciplines:Animal biology, General biology