Development of retinotopy in projections from the eye to the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus and superior colliculus of the wallaby (Macropus eugenii)

Abstract

The development of retinotopy in projections from the eye to the dorsal lateral geniculate (dLGN) and superior colliculus (SC) has been studied in the marsupial wallaby. Discrete retinal lesions were made and the remaining retinal projections were traced with horseradish peroxidase in animals at stages ranging from just after optic innervation of the dLGN and SC to the time when the projections are mature. Topographically organised projections could be recognized a few weeks after axons first reached the dLGN and SC with a topographically discrete projection from nasoventral retinal recognized later than from dorsal, dorso-temporal, temporal, and temporoventral retina. Over time there was an increase in precision of the retinotopy as judged by an increase in sharpness of the borders of filling defects in the projection labelled with horseradish peroxidase. Refinement of the projection from temporal retina preceded that from nasal retina in both the dLGN and SC and in the former occurred concomitantly with the segregation of eye-specific terminal bands. Refinement was complete 16 weeks after birth, prior to eye opening at around 20 weeks after birth. Inequalities in retinal representations in both nuclei were present from the time retinotopy could first be detected. This was before the inequalities in retinal ganglion cell distribution, which underly these representations in the adult, were obvious. Retinotopy and inequalities in retinal representation characteristic of the adult are present from a very early stage in the protracted development of visual projections in the wallaby. Refinement may involve death of inappropriately projecting cells, pruning of inappropriately projecting axon arborizations or could be achieved by growth of the retinorecipient neuropil. Temporonasal differences in the time course of refinement may reflect gradients of maturation in the retina.