Faculty Articles

Postnatal development of onset transient responses in macaque V1 AND V2 neuron

ISSN

0022-3077

Publication Date

9-1-2008

Abstract

Vision of newborn infants is limited by immaturities in their visual brain. In adult primates, the transient onset discharges of visual cortical neurons are thought to be intimately involved with capturing the rapid succession of brief images in visual scenes. Here we sought to determine the responsiveness and quality of transient responses in individual neurons of the primary visual cortex (V1) and visual area 2 (V2) of infant monkeys. We show that the transient component of neuronal firing to 640-ms stationary gratings was as robust and as reliable as in adults only 2 wk after birth, whereas the sustained component was more sluggish in infants than in adults. Thus the cortical circuitry supporting onset transient responses is functionally mature near birth, and our findings predict that neonates, known for their "impoverished vision," are capable of initiating relatively mature fixating eye movements and of performing in detection of simple objects far better than traditionally though.

DOI

10.1152/jn.90446.2008

Volume

100

Issue

3

First Page

1476

Last Page

1487

Disciplines

Optometry

Peer Reviewed

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