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The Journal of Neuroscience, September 24, 2008, 28(39):9817-9827; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1940-08.2008

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Experience-Dependent Plasticity from Eye Opening Enables Lasting, Visual Cortex-Dependent Enhancement of Motion Vision

Glen T. Prusky,^1,2 Byron D. Silver,² Wayne W. Tschetter,^1,2 Nazia M. Alam,^1,2 and Robert M. Douglas³

¹Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medical College, Burke Medical Research Institute, White Plains, New York 10605, ²Department of Neuroscience, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1K 3M4, and ³Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V5Z 3N9

Correspondence should be addressed to Glen T. Prusky, Burke Medical Research Institute, 785 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains, NY 10605. Email: glp2004{at}med.cornell.edu

Developmentally regulated plasticity of vision has generally been associated with "sensitive" or "critical" periods in juvenile life, wherein visual deprivation leads to loss of visual function. Here we report an enabling form of visual plasticity that commences in infant rats from eye opening, in which daily threshold testing of optokinetic tracking, amid otherwise normal visual experience, stimulates enduring, visual cortex-dependent enhancement (>60%) of the spatial frequency threshold for tracking. The perceptual ability to use spatial frequency in discriminating between moving visual stimuli is also improved by the testing experience. The capacity for inducing enhancement is transitory and effectively limited to infancy; however, enhanced responses are not consolidated and maintained unless in-kind testing experience continues uninterrupted into juvenile life. The data show that selective visual experience from infancy can alone enable visual function. They also indicate that plasticity associated with visual deprivation may not be the only cause of developmental visual dysfunction, because we found that experientially inducing enhancement in late infancy, without subsequent reinforcement of the experience in early juvenile life, can lead to enduring loss of function.

Key words: optomotor; optokinetic; visual motion; plasticity; visual cortex; critical period

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Received May 10, 2007; revised July 13, 2008; accepted Aug. 21, 2008.

Correspondence should be addressed to Glen T. Prusky, Burke Medical Research Institute, 785 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains, NY 10605. Email: glp2004{at}med.cornell.edu

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