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Immediate effects of total visual deafferentation on single unit activity in the visual cortex of freely behaving cats. I. Tonic excitability changes

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Summary

Effects of total visual deafferentation (eye enucleation) on maintained and evoked single unit activity in the cat visual cortex (VC) were studied. Three recording states were distinguished: resting arousal (RA), light sleep (LS) and deep sleep (DS). Two characteristic discharge patterns were noted in deafferented units. One was characterized by rhythmic synchronous firing of several units which was accompanied by high-amplitude slow wave bursts in the EEG (6–8/sec) during RA. Another was the abrupt occurrence of long-lasting spike trains which appeared unpredictively irrespective of vigilance levels. The overall discharge rate tended to decrease after deafferentation in both RA and DS while in LS tended to increase slightly. Three types of VC units were distinguished, as in intact ones, on the basis of the correlation function between the mean discharge rate in RA and its changes in LS. The relative incidence for the three types were different in the deafferented VC. The largest group (47.2%) had a sequence of mean discharge rate DS<RA<LS, while in intact animals the largest group (44.3%) had a sequence LS<RA<DS. For deafferented VC units the gradation of unit responsiveness to geniculate stimulation in the three states also paralleled that of the maintained discharge rate as in controls. A significant correlation between the mean discharge rate and the response latency to geniculate stimulation was not apparent following deafferentation due to loss of units with short latency responses and at the same time moderate discharge rates.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anatomy and Brain Research Institute, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, USA

    Takuji Kasamatsu & W. Ross Adey

  2. Max-Planck-Institut für Biophysikalische Chemie, Postfach 968, D-3400, Göttingen-Nikolausberg, Federal Republic of Germany

    Takuji Kasamatsu

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  1. Takuji Kasamatsu
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  2. W. Ross Adey
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Additional information

This research was supported by the UCLA Space Biology Laboratory AFOSR Contract E44620-70-C-0017 and NASA Contract NGR 05-007-195. Computing analysisis by the Brain Research Institute's Data Processing Laboratory was supported by NIH Grant USPHS 5PO1-NS-02501, and by the Health Sciences Computing Facility, UCLA, under NTH Special Research Resources Grant RR-3.

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Kasamatsu, T., Adey, W.R. Immediate effects of total visual deafferentation on single unit activity in the visual cortex of freely behaving cats. I. Tonic excitability changes. Exp Brain Res 20, 157–170 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00234010

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00234010

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