Invariance of retinal output during visual learning.

Visually conditioned heart-rate change in the pigeon has been developed as a vertebrate model system for the cellular analysis of associative learning. This development included identifying the visual pathways that transmit the conditioned stimulus information. That, in turn, established a foundation for neurophysiological analyses during conditioning to determine whether these pathways behave merely as input lines or undergo training-induced modification. We began this analysis at the visual periphery, the retina. By recording the activity of single optic tract fibers over the acquisition of the conditioned response it was demonstrated that neither the maintained nor CS-evoked activity of retinal ganglion cells are modified during non-associative or associative paradigms. Thus, the data (a) describe the temporal properties of the CS-evoked retinal response, (b) exclude various possibilities that might have modified this response during learning, and (c) establish a firm foundation for cellular neurophysiological analysis of central visual structures involved in transmitting the CS information.