Organization of callosal connections in the visual cortex of the rabbit following neonatal enucleation, dark rearing, and strobe rearing

Reorganization of Visual Callosal Connections Following Alterations of Retinal Input and Brain Damage

Vision is a very important sensory modality in humans. Visual disorders are numerous and arising from diverse and complex causes. Deficits in visual function are highly disabling from a social point of view and in addition cause a considerable economic burden. For all these reasons there is an intense effort by the scientific community to gather knowledge on visual deficit mechanisms and to find possible new strategies for recovery and treatment. In this review, we focus on an important and sometimes neglected player of the visual function, the corpus callosum (CC). The CC is the major white matter structure in the brain and is involved in information processing between the two hemispheres. In particular, visual callosal connections interconnect homologous areas of visual cortices, binding together the two halves of the visual field. This interhemispheric communication plays a significant role in visual cortical output. Here, we will first review the essential literature on the physiology of the callosal connections in normal vision. The available data support the view that the callosum contributes to both excitation and inhibition to the target hemisphere, with a dynamic adaptation to the strength of the incoming visual input. Next, we will focus on data showing how callosal connections may sense visual alterations and respond to the classical paradigm for the study of visual plasticity, i.e., monocular deprivation (MD). This is a prototypical example of a model for the study of callosal plasticity in pathological conditions (e.g., strabismus and amblyopia) characterized by unbalanced input from the two eyes. We will also discuss the findings of callosal alterations in blind subjects. Noteworthy, we will discuss data showing that inter-hemispheric transfer mediates recovery of visual responsiveness following cortical damage. Finally, we will provide an overview of how callosal projections dysfunction could contribute to pathologies such as neglect and occipital epilepsy. A particular focus will be on reviewing noninvasive brain stimulation techniques and optogenetic approaches that allow to selectively manipulate callosal function and to probe its involvement in cortical processing and plasticity. Overall, the data indicate that experience can potently impact on transcallosal connectivity, and that the callosum itself is crucial for plasticity and recovery in various disorders of the visual pathway.

Synchronizing retinal activity in both eyes disrupts binocular map development in the optic tectum

Spatiotemporal correlations in the pattern of spontaneous and evoked retinal ganglion cell (RGC) activity are believed to influence the topographic organization of connections throughout the developing visual system. We have tested this hypothesis by examining the effects of interfering with these potential activity cues during development on the functional organization of binocular maps in the Xenopus frog optic tectum. Paired recordings combined with cross-correlation analyses demonstrated that exposing normal frogs to a continuous 1 Hz of stroboscopic illumination synchronized the firing of all three classes of RGC projecting to the tectum and induced similar patterns of temporally correlated activity across both lobes of the nucleus. Embryonic and eye-rotated larval animals were reared until early adulthood under equivalent stroboscopic conditions. The maps formed by each RGC class in the contralateral tectum showed normal topography and stratification after strobe rearing, but with consistently enlarged multiunit receptive fields. Maps of the ipsilateral eye, formed by crossed isthmotectal axons, showed significant disorder and misalignment with direct visual input from the retina, and in the eye-rotated animals complete compensatory reorientation of these maps usually induced by this procedure failed to occur. These findings suggest that refinement of retinal arbors in the tectum and the ability of crossed isthmotectal arbors to establish binocular convergence with these retinal afferents are disrupted when they all fire together. Our data thus provide direct experimental evidence that spatiotemporal activity patterns within and between the two eyes regulate the precision of their developing connections.

Vision influences paw-preference in mice

We studied the influence of vision on the expression of handedness in mice. In one experiment we submitted adult mice that had an opaque scleral contact lens fitted to one eye, to a paw-preference testing procedure. When the eye was occluded before training, the animals showed a clear preference for the paw ipsilateral to the open eye; however, we could not induce a shift in a previously determined, natural, paw-preference when the lens was placed over the eye ipsilateral to the spontaneously preferred paw; these results indicate that vision plays a role in the animal's choice of a paw during the learning phase of the paw-preference test. In a second experiment adult mice that had been subjected to unilateral eye removal at birth, underwent the same test. The enucleation did not appear to influence handedness with respect to both direction and strength. The latter result--we propose--reflects a reorganization of the visual system induced by neonatal enucleation.

The effects of epileptic cortical activity on the development of callosal projections

The effect of epileptic neural activity on the postnatal development of the corpus callosum was studied. Epileptiform activity was induced in the visual cortex of postnatal rabbits by continuous infusion of penicillin. Callosal projections of the occipital cortex were studied in rabbits aged at least 4 weeks. In these penicillin-exposed rabbits, the visual callosal projections extended through most of area 17 in a projection pattern characteristic of neonatal rabbits, rather than being restricted to a narrow callosal zone at the lateral border of area 17, as they usually are by this age. The results indicate that epileptic cortical activity stabilizes immature callosal projections which are normally eliminated during development. The maintenance of such immature and non-specific projections in the mature CNS may interfere with normal cortical functions and could underlie the cognitive deficits which have been observed following childhood epilepsy.

Transcallosally evoked responses in the visual cortex of normal and monocularly enucleated rabbits

In visual cortex of normal adult rabbits, callosal projections are restricted to a 2 mm wide band at the area 17/18 border. In adult rabbits which are monocularly enucleated (ME) on the day of birth, the callosal zone extends 4 mm into the medial region of area 17 in the cortex ipsilateral to the remaining eye. In this study, the function of these anomalous callosal projections in ME rabbits was investigated using electrophysiological techniques. A microelectrode was placed in the visual cortex ipsilateral to the enucleated eye at the 17/18 border, bipolar stimulating electrodes were placed in a homotopic location in the contralateral cortex, and averaged evoked responses (AERs) to stimulation were recorded. The stimulating electrodes were then moved mediolaterally in 1 mm steps, and the AERs were recorded for each location of the stimulating electrodes. In the normal rabbit, a maximal short latency evoked response was recorded when the stimulating electrodes were at a location homotopic to the recording electrode. When the stimulating electrodes were moved a distance of 1 mm or more from this optimal position, this short latency response was either absent or dramatically decreased in amplitude, reflecting the precise topographic pattern of the normal callosal projection. In contrast, in ME rabbits, a consistent response was evoked at the 17/18 border when the stimulating electrodes were moved as much as 3 mm medial to the homotopic position. Since antidromically activated responses and both pre- and postsynaptic orthodromically activated responses contribute to the AER, recordings were also made from single cells in some animals.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)