Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; email:
Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; email:
Annu Rev Vis Sci. 2022 Sep 15;8:291-321. doi: 10.1146/annurev-vision-090721-110411. Epub 2022 Apr 6.
For four decades, investigations of the biological basis of critical periods in the developing mammalian visual cortex were dominated by study of the consequences of altered early visual experience in cats and nonhuman primates. The neural deficits thus revealed also provided insight into the origin and neural basis of human amblyopia that in turn motivated additional studies of humans with abnormal early visual input. Recent human studies point to deficits arising from alterations in all visual cortical areas and even in nonvisual cortical regions. As the new human data accumulated in parallel with a near-complete shift toward the use of rodent animal models for the study of neural mechanisms, it is now essential to review the human data and the earlier animal data obtained from cats and monkeys to infer general conclusions and to optimize future choice of the most appropriate animal model.
四十年来，对发育中哺乳动物视觉皮层关键期的生物学基础的研究主要集中在改变猫和非人类灵长类动物早期视觉经验的后果上。由此揭示的神经缺陷也为理解人类弱视的起源和神经基础提供了线索，进而促使人们对早期视觉输入异常的人类进行更多的研究。最近的人类研究表明，视觉皮层区域甚至非视觉皮层区域的改变都会导致缺陷。随着新的人类数据的积累，以及近乎完全转向使用啮齿动物模型来研究神经机制，现在有必要对人类数据和以前从猫和猴子身上获得的动物数据进行回顾，以推断出普遍的结论，并优化未来选择最合适的动物模型。
