Moving visual stimuli rapidly induce direction sensitivity of developing tectal neurons

Florian Engert, Huizhong W. Tao, Li I. Zhang and Mu-ming Poo ()
Additional contact information
Florian Engert: University of California
Huizhong W. Tao: University of California
Li I. Zhang: University of California
Mu-ming Poo: University of California

Nature, 2002, vol. 419, issue 6906, 470-475

Abstract: Abstract During development of the visual system, the pattern of visual inputs may have an instructive role in refining developing neural circuits1,2,3,4. How visual inputs of specific spatiotemporal patterns shape the circuit development remains largely unknown. We report here that, in the developing Xenopus retinotectal system, the receptive field of tectal neurons can be ‘trained’ to become direction-sensitive within minutes after repetitive exposure of the retina to moving bars in a particular direction. The induction of direction-sensitivity depends on the speed of the moving bar, can not be induced by random visual stimuli, and is accompanied by an asymmetric modification of the tectal neuron's receptive field. Furthermore, such training-induced changes require spiking of the tectal neuron and activation of a NMDA (N-methyl-d-aspartate) subtype of glutamate receptors during training, and are attributable to an activity-induced enhancement of glutamate-mediated inputs. Thus, developing neural circuits can be modified rapidly and specifically by visual inputs of defined spatiotemporal patterns, in a manner consistent with predictions based on spike-time-dependent synaptic modification.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature00988 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:419:y:2002:i:6906:d:10.1038_nature00988

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature00988

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().