THE TIME COURSE OF ABNORMALITIES IN THE BRAIN SUBCORTICAL VISUAL CENTRE FOLLOWING EARLY IMPAIRMENT OF BINOCULAR EXPERIENCE

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Background: Amblyopia related to congenital strabismus belongs to neurological disorders since it is caused by structural and functional remodeling of the visual parts of the brain without any baseline retinal pathology. Although a large number of animal studies on experimentally induced strabismus, as well as clinical cases have been published, the mechanisms and time course of the processes within the brain structures are not fully understood. Aim: To study the time course of abnormalities in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (LGNd) in animals with surgically induced convergent strabismus. LGNd is the structure through which the information from the retina goes to the visual cortex separately for each eye. Materials and methods: 14 strabismic and 17 intact kittens of four age groups were studied. Histochemical method was used to identify cytochrome oxidase which is a  mitochondrial respiratory chain enzyme whose activity correlates with neuronal functional activity. Optical density in eye-specific layers  A  and A1 was measured on the images of stained LGNd sections, with calculation of the contrast difference between them. Results: In strabismic kittens, there were changes in activity of A and A1 layers in the projection of the central part of visual field in LGNd of both hemispheres. At early stages of their formation, a relative decrease in activity was found in both hemispheres in the LGNd layers innervated through non-crossed pathways from both retinae. Thereafter, the time course of abnormalities in LGNd of both hemispheres was different. In the hemisphere ipsilateral to the squinting eye, the difference in layer activity was highest at the age from 3 to 5 months. However, in the opposite hemisphere the same difference indicating a decreased activity in the layer of the squinting eye were observed only at the age of 5 months. Conclusion: The process of amblyopia development during congenital convergent strabismus is characterized by abnormalities in LGNd indicating a possible shift of the visual perception strategy from alternating fixation to suppression of activity of the squinting eye. 

About the authors

S. V. Alekseenko

Pavlov Institute of Physiology Russian Academy of Sciences

Author for correspondence.
Email: binocularity@yandex.ru

PhD (in Biology), Leading Research Fellow, Vision Physiology Laboratory

6 Naberezhnaya Makarova, Saint Petersburg, 199034

Tel.: +7 (911) 221 59 68

Russian Federation

P. Yu. Shkorbatova

Pavlov Institute of Physiology Russian Academy of Sciences

Email: fake@neicon.ru
6 Naberezhnaya Makarova, Saint Petersburg, 199034 Russian Federation

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Copyright (c) 2016 Alekseenko S.V., Shkorbatova P.Y.

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