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Optical imaging of the intrinsic signal as a measure of cortical plasticity in the mouse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2005

JIANHUA CANG ,
VALERY A. KALATSKY ,
SIEGRID LÖWEL  and
MICHAEL P. STRYKER
JIANHUA CANG
Affiliation:
W.M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco
VALERY A. KALATSKY
Affiliation:
W.M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco Present address of Valery Kalatsky: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, N308 Engineering Building 1, Houston, TX 77204-4005, USA
SIEGRID LÖWEL
Affiliation:
W.M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco Present address of Siegrid Löwel: Leibniz-Institute for Neurobiology, Project Group “Visual Development and Plasticity”, Brenneckestr. 6, D-39118 Magdeburg, Germany
MICHAEL P. STRYKER
Affiliation:
W.M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco
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Abstract

The responses of cells in the visual cortex to stimulation of the two eyes changes dramatically following a period of monocular visual deprivation (MD) during a critical period in early life. This phenomenon, referred to as ocular dominance (OD) plasticity, is a widespread model for understanding cortical plasticity. In this study, we designed stimulus patterns and quantification methods to analyze OD in the mouse visual cortex using optical imaging of intrinsic signals. Using periodically drifting bars restricted to the binocular portion of the visual field, we obtained cortical maps for both contralateral (C) and ipsilateral (I) eyes and computed OD maps as (C − I)/(C + I). We defined the OD index (ODI) for individual animals as the mean of the OD map. The ODI obtained from an imaging session of less than 30 min gives reliable measures of OD for both normal and monocularly deprived mice under Nembutal anesthesia. Surprisingly, urethane anesthesia, which yields excellent topographic maps, did not produce consistent OD findings. Normal Nembutal-anesthetized mice have positive ODI (0.22 ± 0.01), confirming a contralateral bias in the binocular zone. For mice monocularly deprived during the critical period, the ODI of the cortex contralateral to the deprived eye shifted negatively towards the nondeprived, ipsilateral eye (ODI after 2-day MD: 0.12 ± 0.02, 4-day: 0.03 ± 0.03, and 6- to 7-day MD: −0.01 ± 0.04). The ODI shift induced by 4-day MD appeared to be near maximal, consistent with previous findings using single-unit recordings. We have thus established optical imaging of intrinsic signals as a fast and reliable screening method to study OD plasticity in the mouse.

Keywords

MouseOptical imagingIntrinsic signalsCritical periodMonocular deprivation
Type
Research Article
Information
Visual Neuroscience , Volume 22 , Issue 5 , September 2005 , pp. 685 - 691
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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