Abstract
Environmental enrichment (EE) has been shown to promote neural plasticity. Its capacity to induce functional repair in models which exhibit profound sensory deficits due to aberrant axonal guidance has not been well-characterized. Ten-m3 knockout (KO) mice exhibit a highly-stereotyped miswiring of ipsilateral retinogeniculate axons and associated profound deficits in binocularly-mediated visual behavior. We determined whether, and when, EE can drive functional recovery by analyzing Ten-m3 KO and wildtype (WT) mice that were enriched for 6 weeks from adulthood, weaning or birth in comparison to standard-housed controls. EE initiated from birth, but not later, rescued the response of Ten-m3 KOs to the “looming” stimulus (expanding disc in dorsal visual field), suggesting improved visual function. EE can thus induce recovery of visual behavior, but only during an early developmentally-restricted time-window.
Highlights
Environmental enrichment (EE) has been reported to confer numerous benefits to neural function
We have recently shown that 6 weeks of EE from birth, but not from weaning or later, is able to induce a significant pruning of mismapped ipsilateral retinogeniculate terminals in Ten-m3 KOs (Eggins et al, 2019)
We first confirmed that standard laboratory housing environment (SE) adult (SE-A) WT mice respond reliably to the looming stimulus in our hands
Summary
Environmental enrichment (EE) has been reported to confer numerous benefits to neural function. EE has been shown to accelerate development, enhance neural plasticity, as well as having beneficial effects on models of neurodegenerative disease (Nithianantharajah and Hannan, 2006), and neurodevelopmental disorders (Kondo et al, 2008, 2016; McOmish et al, 2008; Begenisic et al, 2015). EE has been shown to extend the usual juvenile period of cortical plasticity which enables recovery from amblyopia into adulthood (Sale et al, 2007; Baroncelli et al, 2010, 2016; Scali et al, 2012; Greifzu et al, 2016), as well as accelerating the maturation of neural circuits in young mice (Cancedda et al, 2004; Ciucci et al, 2007). The capacity for EE to induce functional repair of Abbreviations: EE, environmental enrichment; SE, standard laboratory housing environment; KO, knockout; dLGN, dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus; V1, primary visual cortex; WT, wildtype; EE-B, environmental enrichment from birth; EE-W, environmental enrichment from weaning; EE-A, environmental enrichment from adulthood; SE-B, standard environment control for birth group; SE-W, standard environment control for weaning group; SE-A, standard environment control for adult group; SEM, standard error of the mean; ANOVA, analysis of variance
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