Publication Date:
1998-07-24
Description:
Connections in the developing nervous system are thought to be formed initially by an activity-independent process of axon pathfinding and target selection and subsequently refined by neural activity. Blockade of sodium action potentials by intracranial infusion of tetrodotoxin in cats during the early period when axons from the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) were in the process of selecting visual cortex as their target altered the pattern and precision of this thalamocortical projection. The majority of LGN neurons, rather than projecting to visual cortex, elaborated a significant projection within the subplate of cortical areas normally bypassed. Those axons that did project to their correct target were topographically disorganized. Thus, neural activity is required for initial targeting decisions made by thalamic axons as they traverse the subplate.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Catalano, S M -- Shatz, C J -- EY02838/EY/NEI NIH HHS/ -- EY06491/EY/NEI NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1998 Jul 24;281(5376):559-62.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3200, USA. scatalan@cco.caltech.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9677198" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Action Potentials/drug effects
;
Animals
;
Auditory Cortex/cytology/embryology
;
Axons/*physiology/ultrastructure
;
Carbocyanines
;
Cats
;
Dendrites/ultrastructure
;
Geniculate Bodies/cytology/*embryology
;
Neural Pathways
;
Tetrodotoxin/pharmacology
;
Visual Cortex/cytology/*embryology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
Permalink