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The visual properties of rat and cat suprachiasmatic neurones

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Summary

  1. 1.

    Responses of single neurones in the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) were recorded in the anaesthetized rat and cat. Visual SCN units in both species were predominantly present in the caudal half of the nucleus. The large majority could be classified as either tonically suppressed or tonically activated according to whether an increase in diffuse adaptation luminance respectively decreased or increased their mean discharge rate.

  2. 2.

    For both the cell types the maintained discharge at different luminance levels was a monotonically decreasing or increasing function over a large range of light intensities. In both species the threshold for luminance-dependent maintained discharge was high (>−1 log cd·m−2). The observation of either cell type was independent of the phase of the circadian cycle but it was not established whether the same held true for the intensity-response relations.

  3. 3.

    A small proportion of suppressed cells in the rat SCN reflected the state of retinal adaptation in their firing rate. After light adaptation these cells attained their steady state dark discharge only very slowly.

  4. 4.

    The receptive fields of cat SCN cells tended to be large (> 20°) without a clear antagonistic centre-surround organization. It is proposed that the receptive fields of SCN are the result of the convergence of retinal input from tonic W-cells.

  5. 5.

    It is concluded that their characterization as detectors of diffuse temporal luminance gradients makes visual SCN neurones particularly suitable for their function in the photic entrainment of circadian rhythms. This functional specialization is probably common to both the direct retinofugal projection and the indirect visual projection via the ventral lateral geniculate nucleus to the SCN.

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Abbreviations

LGN v :

ventral lateral geniculate nucleus

PSTH :

peri-stimulus time histogram

RF :

receptive field

SCN :

suprachiasmatic nuclei

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Author notes

  1. R. Mason

    Present address: Electropharmacology Laboratory, Department of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, Great Britain

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physiology and Physiological Physics, University of Leiden, Wassenaarseweg 62, NL-2300, RC Leiden, The Netherlands

    G. A. Groos

  2. Department of Communication and Neuroscience, University of Keele, Keele, Staffordshire, Great Britain

    R. Mason

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  1. G. A. Groos
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Additional information

The collaboration of the authors was possible thanks to the financial support of the European Science Foundation (ETPBBR twinning grant ETP/TW/380). The authors are grateful to Mr. J. den Hoed and Mr. D. Scott for their skilled technical assistance and to both Miss J. Dow and Miss M. de Rooy for secretarial assistance. Significant contributions to the work reported here have been made by our students D. van der Kooy and L. Veenman.

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Groos, G.A., Mason, R. The visual properties of rat and cat suprachiasmatic neurones. J. Comp. Physiol. 135, 349–356 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00657651

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