Zhou Baozhuo, Yao Zhimo, Liang Zhen, Wang Zhengchun, Yuan Nini, Liu Zhiguo, Zhou Yifeng
Vision Research Laboratory, School of Life Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027, China.
Sheng Wu Yi Xue Gong Cheng Xue Za Zhi. 2013 Apr;30(2):229-33.
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.
在本研究中，我们采用细胞外单神经元记录技术，比较了老年猫和幼年猫的外侧膝状体（LGN）、18区和内侧外纹状旁区（PMLS）的视觉神经元反应。我们使用发放率向量来表征信息，并通过细胞的反应不规则性来评估视觉特征的退化。反应不规则性通过发放率向量的两个变异系数：Cv和Cv2来表征。我们发现，从幼年猫到老年猫的衰老过程中，LGN区域的反应不规则性没有显著变化。但在其他两个区域，老年猫的神经元表现出比幼年猫明显更大的反应不规则性。结果表明，衰老会损害高级视觉皮层的信息处理功能。这一结果也为研究衰老过程中其他神经元系统的变化提供了参考。
