Frost D O, Boire D, Gingras G, Ptito M
Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and Neuroscience Program, University of Maryland School of Medicine, 655 West Baltimore Street, Baltimore, MD, 21201, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 Sep 26;97(20):11068-73. doi: 10.1073/pnas.190179997.
Combined lesions of retinal targets and ascending auditory pathways can induce, in developing animals, permanent retinal projections to auditory thalamic nuclei and to visual thalamic nuclei that normally receive little direct retinal input. Neurons in the auditory cortex of such animals have visual response properties that resemble those of neurons in the primary visual cortex of normal animals. Therefore, we investigated the behavioral function of the surgically induced retino-thalamo-cortical pathways. We showed that both surgically induced pathways can mediate visually guided behaviors whose normal substrate, the pathway from the retina to the primary visual cortex via the primary thalamic visual nucleus, is missing.
在发育中的动物中,视网膜靶点和听觉上行通路的联合损伤可诱导视网膜向听觉丘脑核和通常很少接受直接视网膜输入的视觉丘脑核形成永久性投射。此类动物听觉皮层中的神经元具有类似于正常动物初级视觉皮层中神经元的视觉反应特性。因此,我们研究了手术诱导的视网膜-丘脑-皮层通路的行为功能。我们发现,这两条手术诱导的通路都能介导视觉引导行为,而其正常基质,即从视网膜经初级丘脑视觉核到初级视觉皮层的通路缺失。