Metabolic activity in rat visual system during exposure to high and low intensities of patterned and diffuse light.

An examination of rat visual system activity, during exposure to either "pattern" (black and white stripes) or "diffuse" (eye covered by white mask) visual stimulation at high or low illumination intensities (1600 and 1 lux at cornea, respectively), was carried out using the 2-deoxyglucose (2-DG) autoradiographic technique. Pattern elevated 2-DG uptake in the dorsal and ventral lateral geniculate nuclei, in the lateral posterior nucleus, and in area 17, but was less effective at the high than at the low light intensity. Diffuse light also elevated 2-DC uptake in the thalamic nuclei but the increase was less impressive and the same at both intensities. Diffuse light at either high or low intensity had no effect on cortex. Like thalamus and cortex, pattern was a less effective stimulus for the colliculus at the high than at the low intensity, but, in contrast to thalamus and cortex, high intensity diffuse light suppressed 2-DG uptake in the colliculus to a level below that produced by darkness; low intensity diffuse light had no effect. These 2-DG findings are discussed in terms of how forebrain and midbrain divisions of the rat's rod-dominated visual system maintained their respective spatial processing and change-detecting functions over a considerable range of illumination intensity.