Response properties of area 17 neurons in cats reared in stroboscopic illumination.

The response properties of 196 area 17 cells were studied qualitatively in seven cats reared from birth in a stroboscopically illuminated environment (frequency, 2/s; duration, 200 microseconds). Quantitative testing with the multihistogram technique was carried out in 115 cells. As control population, 453 neurons recorded in area 17 of the normal adult cat and tested qualitatively (of which 301 neurons were tested quantitatively) were available. In area 17 of strobe-reared cats, a number of spatial characteristics of receptive fields investigated with hand-held stimuli were found to be abnormal. There was a strong reduction in the encounter frequency both of end-stopped cells and of binocularly driven cells in the strobe-reared cats. Central receptive fields in strobe-reared cats were wider than in normal cats, but the increase in receptive-field width with eccentricity was still observed. More cells than in normal cats showed either no selectivity or only a weak bias for stimulus orientation, but the orientation tuning of orientation-selective cells was similar in strobe-reared and normal cats. Quantitative testing revealed that the velocity preference of cells in area 17 subserving central vision was different in strobe-reared cats from that of normal cats, due to a reduction in the encounter frequency of cells showing a preference for low velocities. There was no difference in velocity preference between strobe-reared and normal cats in the parts of area 17 that subserve peripheral vision, the proportion of neurons responding to fast velocities showing a similar increase in both groups of animals. Fewer cells were direction selective in strobe-reared cats than in normal cats. Most of the remaining direction-selective cells had peripheral receptive fields and the synergism between leaving an OFF subregion and entering an ON subregion contributed to their direction selectivity. Latency of neurons in area 17 of strobe-reared cats was slightly higher than in normal cats, but the response strength of neurons was the same in the two groups. The proportion of cells failing to respond to briefly flashed stationary stimuli was significantly lower in strobe-reared than in normal animals. Qualitative and quantitative testing showed that strobe rearing has a stronger effect on the parts of area 17 that subserve central vision than on those that subserve peripheral vision. Comparing the present results with those of Kennedy and Orban (37) shows that strobe rearing has less effect on area 17 than on area 18 and that the functional differences between areas 17 and 18 in strobe-reared cats are smaller than in normal cats.