The mechanisms of plasticity in the visual system of mammals during development and adulthood: uncovering the impact of quality of vision versus binocular competition.

The visual cortex of mammals is immature at birth, both anatomically and physiologically, and develops gradually in the first weeks and months of postnatal life. Much of this sculpting of neuronal connections is generallu thought to occur during so-called critical periods (CP), when circuits are particularly susceptible to external sensory inputs. But in the 7-10 day-period before the CP, the pre-critical period (preCP) (and even before eye-opening) visual stimulation already seems to regulate maturation of the cortical circuitry. Development of connectivity from one eye appears dependent on the absence or presence of input through the other eye, which is quantity of visual stimulation, but also on the quality of visual stimulation in terms of signal to noise. With this project we want to compare the molecular changes induced by different types of visual deprivation in the preCP, and in the CP to dissect the impact of quality of vision versus binocular competition on protein expression patterns in V1 early in life.

Keywords:Neurobiology

Disciplines:Animal biology, General biology, Neurosciences, Biological and physiological psychology, Cognitive science and intelligent systems, Developmental psychology and ageing