Binns KE; Salt TE; (1997) Post eye-opening maturation of visual receptive field diameters
in the superior colliculus of normal- and dark-reared rats. Developmental Brain Research,
99: 263-266.
When the rat's eyes open (P14) the retino-collicular projection is largely mature but the
cortico-collicular afferents are naive and mature considerably in the following week. At P14,
single units in the superior colliculus' superficial grey layer (SGS) had discrete receptive fields
(RFs) (diameter = 15 +/- 1.6 Degrees) which expanded with age, reaching 30 +/- 2.6 Degrees at
P21, possibly reflecting the increasing influence of the visual cortex, whose RFs are known to be
enlarged at P21. Subsequently SGS RFs retracted to 13 +/- 1.3 Degrees by P23. Dark-reared (DR)
rats followed a similar but delayed developmental pattern, such that RFs were still large (27 +/-
3.4 Degrees) at P24. By P30 however the RFs of DR rats were the same as those of normal adults.
Thus visual experience accelerates the emergence of normal RFs in the SGS.
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Last Updated June 4, 1997.