Darkness Alters Maturation of Visual Cortex and Promotes Fast Recovery from Monocular Deprivation
Darkness Alters Maturation of Visual Cortex and Promotes Fast Recovery from Monocular Deprivation
复制标题
DOI：
10.1016/j.cub.2013.01.017
复制
发表时间：
2013-03-04
期刊：
影响因子：
9.2
通讯作者：
Mitchell, Donald E.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Duffy, Kevin R.;Mitchell, Donald E.
出生后早期关键时期大脑可塑性增强是发育感觉神经科学的核心原则，有助于解释早期异常感觉暴露引起的持久缺陷[1, 2]。人类视觉障碍弱视与出生后早期视觉皮层发育中两只眼睛的视觉输入不平衡有关，并通过剥夺一只眼睛的图案化视觉输入在动物中进行建模[3, 4]，这一过程称为单眼剥夺（MD）。我们研究了这样一种可能性：一段黑暗时期可能会将中央视觉通路重置为更具可塑性的阶段，从而提高早期 MD 的恢复能力。在这里，我们表明，10 天的完全黑暗时期会逆转小猫视觉皮层中稳定细胞骨架成分的成熟，并导致快速消除甚至免疫与 MD 弱原性饲养相关的视觉缺陷。黑暗引起的细胞骨架的高度不稳定性可能只是促进视觉恢复的许多平行分子变化之一，可能是通过释放对皮质可塑性的各种制动器来实现的[2]。
The existence of heightened brain plasticity during critical periods in early postnatal life is a central tenet of developmental sensory neuroscience and helps explain the enduring deficits induced by early abnormal sensory exposure [1, 2]. The human visual disorder amblyopia has been linked to unbalanced visual input to the two eyes in early postnatal visual cortical development and has been modeled in animals by depriving them of patterned visual input to one eye [3, 4], a procedure known as monocular deprivation (MD). We investigated the possibility that a period of darkness might reset the central visual pathways to a more plastic stage and hence increase the capacity for recovery from early MD. Here we show that a 10 day period of complete darkness reverses maturation of stable cytoskeleton components in kitten visual cortex and also results in rapid elimination of, or even immunity from, visual deficits linked to amblyogenic rearing by MD. The heightened instability of the cytoskeleton induced by darkness likely represents just one of many parallel molecular changes that promote visual recovery, possibly by release of the various brakes on cortical plasticity [2].