Loss of a specific cell type from dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus in visually deprived cats.

Abstract

cATs REARED under various conditions of visual deprivation are deficient in their subsequent performance of certain visual tasks (6, 19). Wiesel and Hubel (15-17, 25-28) have sought the physiological basis of these effects by comparing receptivefield properties of single visual neurons of normhlly reared cats to those of visually deprived cats. Their consistent finding (17, 26-28), confirmed by others (7), is that cells of the striate cortex develop permanently abnormal receptive-field properties during deprivation rearing. In a preliminary study, Wiesel and Hubel (25) observed that cells of the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (LGNd) in visually deprived cats have essentially normal receptive fields despite the loss of many large cells in this nucleus. These findings have been subtantially confirmed (11, 24). The present studv which follows note the a series presence of of t recent wo funct papers ionallv distinct types of cell in the cat’s retina and LGNd: the X-cells (3, 13) (type II (5, 21) or sustained cells (2)) and the Y-cells (3, 13) (type I (5, 21) or transient cells (2)). This paper presents evidence that one effect of rearing cats with visual deprivation (achieved by neonatal eyelid suture) is the selective elimination from the LGNd of Y-cells. The remaining neurons appear to be functionally normal.