自然斜视猴背侧视觉通路神经元的视差调谐特性与斜视的关系研究

斜视是一种常见的眼科疾病，严重的影响了儿童视觉发育，其发病机制尚不清楚。多数斜视患者眼肌正常，眼球运动并无障碍，提示其致病根源可能来自中枢神经系统。我们在猕猴的背侧视觉通路的内上颞叶区(MST)鉴定了一类编码双眼视差信息的神经元功能作用。而双眼视差信息是保持双眼协调运动，同时注视目标的关键线索。背侧视觉通路的MST区和前眼区(FEF)不仅编码双眼视差信息，也控制眼球运动，因此，申请人提出假设，背侧视觉通路的MST区和FEF区编码双眼视差的神经元的缺失和编码异常，是导致双眼不能同时注视目标，产生斜视的关键因素。当前斜视动物模型主要采用佩戴棱镜或者手术等方法构建，不能很好的模拟斜视的自然发病过程。我们通过对猴群的大规模筛查，发现了三只自然的斜视猕猴，拟以其为模式动物，结合行为学、电生理和药理学，来研究MST和FEF区神经元的视差调谐特性是否异常，探寻斜视发病的关键脑区，为斜视治疗提供新方案。

Strabismus is a common ocular disorder that severely affect the visual development in children. The cause of strabismus is still unknown.Most patients with strabismus have normal eye muscles and eye movements, suggesting that the central neural system might play the essential role in the generation of strabismus. In our previous research, we have identified the functional role of a group of disparity-selective neuronsin medial temporal areas (MST) in the macaque dorsal visual pathway. Binocular disparity provides critical cues for aligning the eyes during movement or fixation on a target. In addition to encoding binocular disparity, areas MST and Frontal Eye Field (FEF) also control eye movement. Therefore, we hypothesize that a deficient number of neurons or an abnormality of neuronal encoding in areas MST and FEF leads to misalignment of both eyes and causes strabismus. Previous animal models of strabismus utilize prism goggles or medial rectus tenotomy, however these methods of artificial strabismus did not mimic the pathological mechanism in human patients of strabismus. We found three natural strabismus subjects via extensive ophthalmic screening among the macaque population. Using the macaques with strabismus as animal models, we are going to combine behavior, electrophysiology and pharmacology techniques to identify whether binocular tuning of the neurons in MST and FEF are normal and find out the critical brain areas that cause strabismus, which may lead the development of better treatments.