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Song F, Lyu L, Bao M. Adaptation of Ocular Opponency Neurons Mediates Attention-Induced Ocular Dominance Plasticity. Neurosci Bull 2024; 40:339-349. [PMID: 37635196 PMCID: PMC10912405 DOI: 10.1007/s12264-023-01103-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/13/2023] [Accepted: 06/01/2023] [Indexed: 08/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Previous research has shown that ocular dominance can be biased by prolonged attention to one eye. The ocular-opponency-neuron model of binocular rivalry has been proposed as a candidate account for this phenomenon. Yet direct neural evidence is still lacking. By manipulating the contrast of dichoptic testing gratings, here we measured the steady-state visually evoked potentials (SSVEPs) at the intermodulation frequencies to selectively track the activities of ocular-opponency-neurons before and after the "dichoptic-backward-movie" adaptation. One hour of adaptation caused a shift of perceptual and neural ocular dominance towards the unattended eye. More importantly, we found a decrease in the intermodulation SSVEP response after adaptation, which was significantly greater when high-contrast gratings were presented to the attended eye than when they were presented to the unattended eye. These results strongly support the view that the adaptation of ocular-opponency-neurons contributes to the ocular dominance plasticity induced by prolonged eye-based attention.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fangxing Song
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
| | - Lili Lyu
- Institute of Neuroscience, Key Laboratory of Primate Neurobiology, CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200031, China.
| | - Min Bao
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
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Wang J, Song F, He X, Bao M. Negligible contribution of adaptation of ocular opponency neurons to the effect of short-term monocular deprivation. Front Psychol 2024; 14:1282113. [PMID: 38274682 PMCID: PMC10809396 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1282113] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/29/2023] [Accepted: 12/21/2023] [Indexed: 01/27/2024] Open
Abstract
Introduction Modeling work on binocular rivalry has described how ocular opponency neurons represent interocular conflict. These neurons have recently been considered to mediate an ocular dominance shift to the eye that has viewed a backward movie for long during which time the other eye is presented with a regular movie. Unlike typical short-term monocular deprivation, the visual inputs are comparable across eyes in that "dichoptic-backward-movie" paradigm. Therefore, it remains unclear whether the ocular opponency neurons are also responsible for the short-term monocular deprivation effect which is prevalently explained by the homeostatic compensation theory. We designed two experiments from distinct perspectives to investigate this question. Methods In Experiment 1, we mitigated the imbalance in the activity of opponency neurons between the two eyes during monocular deprivation by presenting video stimuli alternately. In Experiment 2, we directly evaluated the response of opponency neurons before and after monocular deprivation using SSVEP techniques. Results Consistent with each other, both experiments failed to provide reliable evidence supporting the involvement of ocular opponency neurons in the short-term monocular deprivation effect. Discussion Our results suggest that ocular opponency neurons may not play an essential role in the short-term monocular deprivation effect, potentially due to interference from the homeostatic plasticity mechanism.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jue Wang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Fangxing Song
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Xin He
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Min Bao
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Beijing, China
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Steinwurzel C, Morrone MC, Sandini G, Binda P. Active vision gates ocular dominance plasticity in human adults. Curr Biol 2023; 33:R1038-R1040. [PMID: 37875073 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.08.062] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/28/2023] [Revised: 08/19/2023] [Accepted: 08/22/2023] [Indexed: 10/26/2023]
Abstract
Primary visual cortex (V1) retains a form of plasticity in adult humans: a brief period of monocular deprivation induces an enhanced response to the deprived eye, which can stabilize into a consolidated plastic change1,2 despite unaltered thalamic input3. This form of homeostatic plasticity in adults is thought to act through neuronal competition between the representations of the two eyes, which are still separate in primary visual cortex4,5. During monocular occlusion, neurons of the deprived eye are thought to increase response gain given the absence of visual input, leading to the post-deprivation enhancement. If the decrease of reliability of the monocular response is crucial to establish homeostatic plasticity, this could be induced in several different ways. There is increasing evidence that V1 processing is affected by voluntary action, allowing it to take into account the visual effects of self-motion6, important for efficient active vision7. Here we asked whether ocular dominance homeostatic plasticity could be elicited without degrading the quality of monocular visual images but simply by altering their role in visuomotor control by introducing a visual delay in one eye while participants actively performed a visuomotor task; this causes a discrepancy between what the subject sees and what he/she expects to see. Our results show that homeostatic plasticity is gated by the consistency between the monocular visual inputs and a person's actions, suggesting that action not only shapes visual processing but may also be essential for plasticity in adults.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cecilia Steinwurzel
- Department of Translational Research on New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy; Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EB, UK
| | - Maria Concetta Morrone
- Department of Translational Research on New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy.
| | - Giulio Sandini
- Research Unit of Robotics, Brain, and Cognitive Sciences (RBCS), Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, 16163 Genova, Italy
| | - Paola Binda
- Department of Translational Research on New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy
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Du X, Liu L, Dong X, Bao M. Effects of altered-reality training on interocular disinhibition in amblyopia. Ann N Y Acad Sci 2023; 1522:126-138. [PMID: 36811156 DOI: 10.1111/nyas.14969] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/24/2023]
Abstract
Training of viewing an altered-reality environment dichoptically has been found to reactivate human adult ocular dominance plasticity, allowing improvement of vision for amblyopia. One suspected mechanism for this training effect is ocular dominance rebalancing through interocular disinhibition. Here, we investigated whether the training modulated the neural responses reflecting interocular inhibition. Thirteen patients with amblyopia and 11 healthy controls participated in this study. Before and after six daily altered-reality training sessions, participants watched flickering video stimuli with their steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP) signals recorded simultaneously. We assessed the amplitude of SSVEP response at intermodulation frequencies, which was a potential neural indicator of interocular suppression. The results showed that training weakened the intermodulation response only in the amblyopic group, which was in agreement with the hypothesis that the training reduced interocular suppression specific to amblyopia. Moreover, even one month after the training ended, we could still observe this neural training effect. These findings provide preliminary neural evidence in support of the disinhibition account for treating amblyopia. We also explain these results with the ocular opponency model, which, to our knowledge, is the first time for this binocular rivalry model to be used in explaining long-term ocular dominance plasticity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xinxin Du
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Lijuan Liu
- Beijing Institute of Ophthalmology, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Captital Medical University, Beijing, China
| | - Xue Dong
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Min Bao
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Beijing, China
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Animali S, Steinwurzel C, Dardano A, Sancho-Bornez V, Del Prato S, Morrone MC, Daniele G, Binda P. Effect of fasting on short-term visual plasticity in adult humans. Eur J Neurosci 2023; 57:148-162. [PMID: 36437778 PMCID: PMC10108283 DOI: 10.1111/ejn.15873] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/27/2022] [Revised: 11/10/2022] [Accepted: 11/21/2022] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Brain plasticity and function is impaired in conditions of metabolic dysregulation, such as obesity. Less is known on whether brain function is also affected by transient and physiological metabolic changes, such as the alternation between fasting and fed state. Here we asked whether these changes affect the transient shift of ocular dominance that follows short-term monocular deprivation, a form of homeostatic plasticity. We further asked whether variations in three of the main metabolic and hormonal pathways affected in obesity (glucose metabolism, leptin signalling and fatty acid metabolism) correlate with plasticity changes. We measured the effects of 2 h monocular deprivation in three conditions: post-absorptive state (fasting), after ingestion of a standardised meal and during infusion of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), an incretin physiologically released upon meal ingestion that plays a key role in glucose metabolism. We found that short-term plasticity was less manifest in fasting than in fed state, whereas GLP-1 infusion did not elicit reliable changes compared to fasting. Although we confirmed a positive association between plasticity and supraphysiological GLP-1 levels, achieved by GLP-1 infusion, we found that none of the parameters linked to glucose metabolism could predict the plasticity reduction in the fasting versus fed state. Instead, this was selectively associated with the increase in plasma beta-hydroxybutyrate (B-OH) levels during fasting, which suggests a link between neural function and energy substrates alternative to glucose. These results reveal a previously unexplored link between homeostatic brain plasticity and the physiological changes associated with the daily fast-fed cycle.
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Affiliation(s)
- Silvia Animali
- Department of Surgical, Medical and Molecular Pathology and Critical Care Medicine, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
| | - Cecilia Steinwurzel
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Pharmacology and Child Health, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.,Department of Translational Research on New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
| | - Angela Dardano
- Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
| | | | - Stefano Del Prato
- Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
| | - Maria Concetta Morrone
- Department of Translational Research on New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.,IRCCS Stella Maris Foundation, Pisa, Italy
| | - Giuseppe Daniele
- Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
| | - Paola Binda
- Department of Translational Research on New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
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Chen Y, Mao Y, Zhou J, He Z, Hess RF. The shift in sensory eye dominance from short-term monocular deprivation exhibits no dependence on test spatial frequency. EYE AND VISION 2022; 9:32. [PMID: 36045414 PMCID: PMC9434876 DOI: 10.1186/s40662-022-00303-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/09/2022] [Accepted: 08/08/2022] [Indexed: 12/02/2022]
Abstract
Background Studies have shown that short-term monocular deprivation induces a shift in sensory eye dominance in favor of the deprived eye. Yet, how short-term monocular deprivation modulates sensory eye dominance across spatial frequency is not clear. To address this issue, we conducted a study to investigate the dependence of short-term monocular deprivation effect on test spatial frequency. Methods Ten healthy young adults (age: 24.7 ± 1.7 years, four males) with normal vision participated. We deprived their dominant eye with a translucent patch for 2.5 h. The interocular contrast ratio (dominant eye/non-dominant eye, i.e., the balance point [BP]), which indicates the contribution that the two eyes make to binocular combination, was measured using a binocular orientation combination task. We assessed if BPs at 0.5, 4 or 6 cycles/degree (c/d) change as a result of monocular deprivation. Different test spatial frequency conditions were conducted on three separate days in a random fashion. Results We compared the BPs at 0.5, 4 and 6 c/d before and after monocular deprivation. The BPs were found to be significantly affected by deprivation, where sensory eye dominance shift to the deprived eye (F1.86, 16.76 = 33.09, P < 0.001). The changes of BP were consistent at 0.5, 4, and 6 c/d spatial frequencies (F2,18 = 0.15, P = 0.57). Conclusion The sensory eye dominance plasticity induced by short-term deprivation is not dependent on test spatial frequency, suggesting it could provide a practical solution for amblyopic therapy that was concerned with the binocular outcome. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40662-022-00303-4.
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