Isochronic transplantation of neonatal grafts in the visual cortex of cats: responsiveness, ocular dominance and specificity of cortical cells to visual stimulation

Abstract

The visual cortex of adult cats was studied physiologically following neonatal isochronic transplantation of grafts from areas 17,18, which were placed homotopically, in order to reveal their functional integration and thus possible repairing of damaged cortical neuronal circuits. Three homograft cats, in which transplantation was carried out between siblings (228 cortical cells) were compared to 4 animals receiving reimplanted autografts of the equivalent size (131 cells) as well as 3 animals with analogous sectioning of the visual cortex (162 cells) (pseudograft controls). The location of the boundaries between the transplant region and the host were determined using the Nissl's method for staining histological cross sections. Extracellular unit recording revealed typical waveform of the action potentials in the transplanted region and in the surrounding host tissue of all groups of cats. Visual responsiveness in the homograft cats was 17.5% in the transplanted region and 80.4% in the unoperated hemisphere; the corresponding results were 40.3% for the transplanted region and 82.2% for the unoperated hemisphere in the autografts and 23.1% and 73.4% in the pseudografts. The specificity of the cells to visual stimulation as expressed by their orientation and direction specificity, indicated preservation of these properties in the transplanted cats. While all responsive cells in the transplanted region of the homografts were orientation specific, their proportion was 60% in the autografts and 55.5% in the analogous region in the pseudograft controls. As to the direction specific cells, their performance in the grafted region of the grafted cats was even much higher than that of the pseudograft controls. The ocular dominance distribution of the cells showed preservation of binocularity in the transplanted region (90.0% binocular cells) of the homografts; it was however smaller in the equivalent region of the autografts (65.0%) and remarkably reduced (20.0%) in the pseudografts. It was concluded that despite the deafferentation induced during the transplantation procedure, a remarkable visual responsiveness was found in the transplanted region, indicating postoperative recovery. However, the cells there were mainly affected in their activity and less in their specificity to visual stimulation.