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
NSUWorks Citation
Zhang, Bin; Smith, Earl L. III; and Chino, Yuzo M., "Postnatal development of onset transient responses in macaque V1 AND V2 neuron" (2008). Faculty Articles. 14.
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/hpd_opt_facarticles/14