Kim D S, Bonhoeffer T
Max-Planck-Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany.
Nature. 1994 Aug 4;370(6488):370-2. doi: 10.1038/370370a0.
In the visual system of young kittens, the layout of the cortical maps for ocular dominance and orientation preference converges to an equilibrium state within the first few weeks of life and normally remains largely unchanged. If during the critical period, however, patterned visual experience is restricted to only one eye for a few days, cortical neurons lose their ability to respond to stimulation of the deprived eye. We used the 'reverse occlusion' protocol together with chronical optical imaging to investigate how the profound anatomical changes accompanying monocular deprivation affect the spatial pattern of the cortical orientation preference map. We report here that after 1 week of monocular deprivation, cortical orientation maps for the deprived eye had vanished. But we also discovered that after subsequent reverse occlusion the restored orientation maps were very similar to the original maps. This demonstrates that in spite of functional disconnection of one eye after monocular deprivation, the layout of cortical orientation maps, when re-established for this eye, is not formed from scratch but is strongly influenced by previous experience.
在幼猫的视觉系统中，眼优势和方向偏好的皮质图谱布局在出生后的头几周内会收敛到一个平衡状态，并且通常在很大程度上保持不变。然而，如果在关键期内，有图案的视觉体验在几天内仅局限于一只眼睛，皮质神经元就会失去对被剥夺眼刺激的反应能力。我们使用“反向遮盖”方案结合长期光学成像技术，来研究单眼剥夺伴随的深刻解剖学变化如何影响皮质方向偏好图谱的空间模式。我们在此报告，单眼剥夺1周后，被剥夺眼的皮质方向图谱消失了。但我们还发现，在随后的反向遮盖后，恢复的方向图谱与原始图谱非常相似。这表明，尽管单眼剥夺后一只眼睛出现了功能断开，但当为这只眼睛重新建立皮质方向图谱时，其布局并非从零开始形成，而是受到先前经验的强烈影响。
