ReviewOcular dominance development revisited
Introduction
Ocular dominance column formation and plasticity in primary visual cortex (V1) have long been thought to rely on activity-dependent competition between thalamic afferents representing the two eyes. This hypothesis was largely based on data from anatomical studies, employing transneuronally transported tracers 1., 2., 3., 4., 5.. However, improvements in anatomical and physiological techniques over the past decade suggest that the development of ocular dominance columns involves two phases: an initial establishment phase that may utilize innate signals and a later, plastic phase, corresponding to the critical period, that relies on patterned neural activity. Although most experimental approaches have focused on activity-related events during the critical period, new experiments will be required to determine the nature of the signals involved in the initial establishment of cortical structures. This review summarises the evidence that the establishment and plasticity of ocular dominance columns may be temporally and mechanistically distinct developmental events.
Section snippets
A brief history of ocular dominance column development
Hubel and Wiesel initially described ocular dominance columns — the organization of binocular responses familiar to most neurobiologists — in the early 1960s, on the basis of electrophysiological recordings in cat V1 [6]. They noted that neurons differed in the extent to which they were activated by each of the two eyes — the physiological property of ocular dominance — and that cells with similar eye preference were grouped together into columns. The ocularity of these columns was dictated by
Separating establishment and plasticity: timing
There is now an emerging consensus that the initial establishment of ocular dominance columns takes place considerably before the critical period. In macaque monkeys, the basic anatomical structure of segregated LGN afferents in V1 is laid out well before birth 15., 16.. Moreover, both anatomical ocular dominance segregation and physiological segregation are fully mature by birth 17., 18.. Because the critical period for ocular dominance plasticity does not, by definition, begin until the onset
Separating establishment and plasticity: mechanisms
In the most straightforward models of activity-based competition, afferents representing the two eyes compete with one another, on the basis of their ability to activate layer 4 cells. The starting point for this competition is assumed to be an equal representation of the two eyes and their roughly equivalent ability to activate postsynaptic neurons [29]. However, recent findings suggest that, before the critical period, the inputs from the two eyes may not be equivalent. Optical imaging of
Conclusions and future directions
Until recently, there has been little experimental foundation for the idea that the establishment and plasticity of ocular dominance columns may rely on different mechanisms [44]. Consequently, few experiments have been designed to directly search for evidence of other patterning signals. If molecular patterning is involved in forming ocular dominance columns, new types of investigations, in addition to manipulations of activity, will be required. For example, an examination of the structure of
Acknowledgements
Our work is supported by the National Eye Institute (EY07690).
References and recommended reading
Papers of particular interest, published within the annual period of review, have been highlighted as:
• of special interest
•• of outstanding interest
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