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The Journal of Neuroscience, April 1, 2003, 23(7):2851
Developmental Loss of Synchronous Spontaneous Activity in the
Mouse Retina Is Independent of Visual Experience
Jay
Demas,
Stephen J.
Eglen, and
Rachel O. L.
Wong
Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Washington University
School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110
In the immature retina, correlated spontaneous activity in the form
of propagating waves is thought to be necessary for the refinement of
connections between the retina and its targets. The continued presence
of this activity in the mature retina would interfere with the
transmission of information about the visual scene. The mechanisms
responsible for the disappearance of retinal waves are not well
understood, but one hypothesis is that visual experience is important.
To test this hypothesis, we monitored the developmental changes in
spontaneous retinal activity of both normal mice and mice reared in the
dark. Using multi-electrode array recordings, we found that retinal
waves in normally reared mice are present at postnatal day (P) 9 and
begin to break down shortly after eye opening, around P15. By P21,
waves have disappeared, and synchronous firing is comparable with that
observed in the adult (6 weeks). In mice raised in the dark, we found a
similar time course for the disappearance of waves. However, at P15,
dark-reared retinas occasionally showed abnormally long periods of
relative inactivity, not seen in controls. Apart from this quiescence, we found no striking differences between the patterns of spontaneous retinal activity from normal and dark-reared mice. We therefore suggest
that visual experience is not required for the loss of synchronous
spontaneous activity.
Key words:
retinal waves; retinal development; activity-dependent development; spontaneous activity; dark-rearing; multi-electrode array
Copyright © 2003 Society for Neuroscience 0270-6474/03/2372851-10$05.00/0
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