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The Journal of Neuroscience, August 1, 1998, 18(15):5850-5858

Competition for Neurotrophic Factors: Ocular Dominance Columns

Terry Elliott and Nigel R. Shadbolt

Department of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, United Kingdom

Activity-dependent competition between afferents in the primary visual cortex of many mammals is a quintessential feature of neuronal development. From both experimental and theoretical perspectives, understanding the mechanisms underlying competition is a significant challenge. Recent experimental work suggests that geniculocortical afferents might compete for retrograde neurotrophic factors. We show that a mathematically well-characterized model of retrograde neurotrophic interactions, in which the afferent uptake of neurotrophic factors is activity-dependent and in which the average level of uptake determines the complexity of the axonal arbors of afferents, permits the anatomical segregation of geniculocortical afferents into ocular dominance columns. The model induces segregation provided that the levels of neurotrophic factors available either by activity-independent release from cortical cells or by exogenous cortical infusion are not too high; otherwise segregation breaks down. We show that the model exhibits changes in ocular dominance column periodicity in response to changes in interocular image correlations and that the model predicts that changes in intraocular image correlations should also affect columnar periodicity.

Key words: neurotrophic interactions; ocular dominance columns; neuronal development; nerve growth factor; brain-derived neurotrophic factor; competition; striate cortex; mathematical models

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Copyright © 1998 Society for Neuroscience  0270-6474/98/18155850-09$05.00/0

This article has been cited by other articles:

				P. A. Appleby and T. Elliott Stable Competitive Dynamics Emerge from Multispike Interactions in a Stochastic Model of Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity. Neural Comput., October 1, 2006; 18(10): 2414 - 2464. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				T. Elliott and J. Kramer Coupling an aVLSI Neuromorphic Vision Chip to a Neurotrophic Model of Synaptic Plasticity: The Development of Topography Neural Comput., October 1, 2002; 14(10): 2353 - 2370. [Abstract] [Full Text]

				T. Elliott and N. R. Shadbolt Multiplicative Synaptic Normalization and a Nonlinear Hebb Rule Underlie a Neurotrophic Model of Competitive Synaptic Plasticity Neural Comput., June 1, 2002; 14(6): 1311 - 1322. [Abstract] [Full Text]

				M. Rucci, G. M. Edelman, and J. Wray Modeling LGN Responses during Free-Viewing: A Possible Role of Microscopic Eye Movements in the Refinement of Cortical Orientation Selectivity J. Neurosci., June 15, 2000; 20(12): 4708 - 4720. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				T. Elliott and N. R. Shadbolt A Neurotrophic Model of the Development of the Retinogeniculocortical Pathway Induced by Spontaneous Retinal Waves J. Neurosci., September 15, 1999; 19(18): 7951 - 7970. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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