Publication Date:
1998-02-07
Description:
The role of experience in the development of the cerebral cortex has long been controversial. Patterned visual experience in the cat begins when the eyes open about a week after birth. Cortical maps for orientation and ocular dominance in the primary visual cortex of cats were found to be present by 2 weeks. Early pattern vision appeared unimportant because these cortical maps developed identically until nearly 3 weeks of age, whether or not the eyes were open. The naive maps were powerfully dominated by the contralateral eye, and experience was needed for responses to the other eye to become strong, a process unlikely to be strictly Hebbian. With continued visual deprivation, responses to both eyes deteriorated, with a time course parallel to the well-known critical period of cortical plasticity. The basic structure of cortical maps is therefore innate, but experience is essential for specific features of these maps, as well as for maintaining the responsiveness and selectivity of cortical neurons.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2453000/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2453000/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Crair, M C -- Gillespie, D C -- Stryker, M P -- EY02874/EY/NEI NIH HHS/ -- EY09760/EY/NEI NIH HHS/ -- R37 EY002874/EY/NEI NIH HHS/ -- R37 EY002874-20/EY/NEI NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1998 Jan 23;279(5350):566-70.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉W. M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9438851" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Brain Mapping
;
Cats
;
Microelectrodes
;
*Photic Stimulation
;
Vision, Monocular
;
*Vision, Ocular
;
Visual Cortex/*physiology
;
Visual Pathways
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
