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Both behavioural and neurophysiological changes can be observed in cats that have experienced interference with their normal visual environment. This visual deprivation may result from alterations to the path of light forming the normal image on the retina, and includes changes that cause the image to fall on an inappropriate part of the retina so that normal binocular interactions are affected. While some neurophysiological changes can be observed at the level of the lateral geniculate nucleus they become more prominent as information reaches the visual cortex, where cells commonly receive neural excitation from both eyes and require the information to come from corresponding parts of the two retinas and that the stimulus should have appropriate orientation and direction of movement. Many of the observations of deprivation in animals have clear parallels in the human environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acuities of cells in the primary visual cortex of five tenotomized strabismic cats were measured. Previous behavioural studies have shown such animals to possess a severe amblyopia of approximately 1.5 octaves of spatial frequency, yet the acuities of both retinal ganglion and lateral geniculate X-cells are normal. The receptive fields of the cortical cells sampled were within 5° of the area centralis projection. On average, the acuities of cortical cells driven by the amblyopic eye were nearly 1 octave less than those for the non-deviating eye. However, the best cell acuities for each eye were nearly the same. The relationship between ocular dominance and cell acuity was found to be different for the two eyes despite a symmetrical ocular dominance distribution. The acuity deficit for cells driven through the amblyopic eye was present at all depths along the electrode tracks. We conclude that in this model amblyopia, the initial spatial processing deficit lies in the visual cortex, and most probably in the cells of layer IV. Further-more, the presence of a few cells driven by the amblyopic eye which can perform nearly as well as those from the fellow eye in processing high spatial frequencies gives new insight into the way in which strabismic and deprivation amblyopias differ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acuities of X-cells from the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) were measured in five cats raised with a convergent strabismus, surgically induced by tenotomy. The acuities of cells driven by the strabismic eye were not significantly different from the acuities of cells driven by the non-deviating eye over the range of eccentricities in the visual field studied (from the area centralis to over 20°). The data were also similar to X-cell acuities in the LGN of 3 normal cats. Lowered acuities of LGN X-cells driven by the deviating eye of an esotropic cat in which the strabismus was created by myectomy confirm a previous finding of a retinal locus of amblyopia associated with that preparation. In contrast, the results here implicate the visual cortex as the initial site of the deficit in spatial processing in amblyopia arising from tenotomy strabismus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiments were carried out to determine the effects of different types of experimental strabismus on the acuities of retinal ganglion cells. Six kittens were raised from twenty-one days of age with an esotropia surgically induced by myectomy of the lateral rectus muscle and a large portion of the superior oblique muscle. The results are compared with those, previously reported, from five other cats also made esotropic, but by tenotomy of the lateral rectus. All animals tested behaviourally were amblyopic in the strabismic eye. For square wave gratings, the visual acuities were 1.0 to 2.5 cyc/deg through the strabismic eye compared with 6.0 to 7.5 cyc/deg through the non-deviating eye. The cut-off spatial frequencies were determined for 132 brisk sustained cells from five of the myectomized strabismic cats. There was a loss of approximately 20% in cut-off spatial frequency when compared with both normal and tenotomized cats. A correlate of the physiologically observed difference between the tenotomized cats and the myectomized cats was also found in the morphology of cells in the lateral geniculate nucleus. The tenotomized cats showed no evidence of cell shrinkage in laminae receiving a projection from the amblyopic eye whereas in the myectomized cats large differences were observed in cell cross-sectional areas between laminae receiving input from the amblyopic eye and those receiving input from the non-deviating eye. Together, these findings indicate that the presence of a neural deficit in the retina of strabismic cats is associated with the actual removal of extra-ocular muscle and probably has little to do with the optical quality of images arriving at the retina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two preparations were used to study the developmental effects of prolonged blurring of retinal images on the acuities of retinal ganglion cells. Five kittens were raised from three weeks to six months of age with daily administration of atropine to one eye. Another two kittens were raised from three weeks to 16 weeks with a contact lens of high refractive power fitted to one eye. Behavioural estimates of the visual acuity were made for two animals from each group. Animals of both groups demonstrated an amblyopia in the experimental eye: visual acuity varied from 1.8 to 2.5 cycles per degree compared with 6.0 to 7.5 cycles per degree when using the normal eye. The spatial resolving properties were measured for retinal ganglion cells within the amblyopic eyes of two lens-reared cats and three atropinized cats. Brisk-sustained (X) cells were recorded from along the naso-temporal division. The acuities of ganglion cells from the lens-reared cats were indistinguishable from those from normal cats at comparable eccentricities. However, for the cats raised with atropine administration, sub-normal acuities were determined for retinal ganglion cells from all regions that were studied in the experimental eye. We conclude that blur of retinal images produced by external means has no effect on the resolving power of retinal ganglion cells. The lowered ganglion cell acuities encountered with the atropinised cats must be attributable to a secondary effect of the atropine administration. Organic changes in the retinal blood vessel pattern support this contention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tone bursts produced bands of selective 2-[C]-deoxyglucose labelling in the inferior colliculus (IC) of the awake monkey. Low tone frequencies produced labelling in dorsal regions and high tone frequencies produced labelling in ventral regions. The position of the bands coincided with the position of a single unit with a characteristic frequency, which was the same as the frequency producing the labelling. These findings indicate that the bands of labelling represent iso-frequency contours in IC. The iso-frequency contours extended across most of the nucleus and were oriented from dorsomedially to ventro-laterally at 20-30° from the horizontal and became more vertical anteriorly. The width of the contours was as narrow as 200 μm, suggesting that the contours might represent 2 or 3 overlapping cellular laminae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relative efficacy of distributed versus massed reverse occlusion therapy in promoting recovery from the anatomical and physiological effects of monocular deprivation was studied in two experiments performed on kittens raised with one eye occluded from eye-opening until 5 weeks of age. The first experiment explored the effects of different periods (ranging from 0.5 to 4 h) of reverse occlusion imposed daily for 20 days. The second, involving a fixed period of reverse occlusion (20 h), examined recovery with respect to the distribution of that period over a varied number of brief daily sessions. Recovery was assessed in terms of changes in cortical ocular dominance and lateral geniculate cell morphology. Although recovery of both cortical ocular dominance and geniculate cell morphology showed the same overall progression with increasing periods of reverse occlusion, changes were apparent in the lateral geniculate nucleus before changes were evident in cortical ocular dominance. A given period of reverse occlusion was found to be far more effective in promoting recovery when distributed over a number of different exposure sessions than when massed together in just one or two sessions. The data suggest that there is a maximal rate of cortical recovery which is achieved with surprisingly brief daily periods of forced visual exposure of the initially deprived eye. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first clear case where auditory information has radically affected unambiguous visual perception has recently been documented (Shams, Kamitani, & Shimojo, 2000). Varying the number of beeps presented alongside flashes was found to vary the number of flashes perceived. The illusory effect is phenomenological rather than qualitative, is stable with respect to many experimental variables and as such is thought to reflect an extensive property of polysensory mechanisms in the brain. We present the first of two experiments examining the spatial properties of the illusion. Auditory stimuli were presented from either the same or the opposite location as the visual flash. Preliminary results suggest that this arrangement has little effect on the illusion. Secondly we will use objects in space (rather than flashing disks on a computer display) that present both the auditory and visual stimuli. The convergence of these two experiments should provide interesting information regarding the brain systems that are involved with the illusion. If Shams et al. (2000) are correct in saying that the illusion reflects a widespread property of polysensory mechanisms in the brain then the current results should go some way towards resolving whether these systems operate in a location- or object-specific manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although considerable research has focused on defining the precise nature of the behavioural symptomatology of ADHD: inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity (Swanson et al., 1998), the results are equivocal. This is partly because few studies have investigated different types of attention in the same ADHD population. Thus, the major goal of the current study was to further investigate the precise nature of ADHD 'inattention' symptomatology using two accepted measures of sustained and transient attention in the same population. Sustained attention performance was measured in 12 ADHD children and 25 normal control children using a traditional Continuous Performance Task (CPT) and a novel CPT. Transient attention performance was measured using a Visual Search Task (VST). The results revealed that the same group of ADHD children performed significantly worse on both the CPTs compared to the normals but that their performance on the VST was similar to that of normals. These results indicate that combined-type ADHD participants show impaired sustained attention, but not impaired transient attention performance, supporting the view that different ADHD subtypes have different deficit of attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]