Abstract
Purpose: :
Vertebrate retinas are not fully mature after birth, even after eye opening retinal ganglion cells continue undergo dendritic remodeling. Visual experience has a great impact on visual system development in the brain, and it may exert similar effects on the maturation of ganglion cells in the retina. The goal of this study is to examine if light deprivation alters morphological maturation of ganglion cells in the developing rabbit retina.
Methods: :
The Diolistic labeling technique was applied to sample ganglion cells in both normal- and the dark-reared P20-22 rabbit retinas. All labeled neurons were classified into specific ganglion cell classes according to features of their dendritic morphologies and stratification patterns, and were analyzed using the general linear model (GLM) to test the effect of light deprivation on the dendritic area.
Results: :
Overall, there was no significant difference in the dendritic field size between ganglion cells of the normal- and the dark-reared groups (G1, G4 OFF, G7, G9, G10, G11 OFF). Ganglion cell types which did not have enough numbers to compare also revealed the tendency that light experience does not play an important role in the ganglion cell development.
Conclusions: :
These results indicate that the influence of visual experience on morphological maturation of ganglion cells may be insignificant in the rabbit retina development. This also implies that the receptive field size of rabbit ganglion cells may mature normally without the stimulation of visual inputs.
Keywords: ganglion cells • development