Experience-dependent plasticity of multiple receptive field properties in lateral geniculate binocular neurons during the critical period

Meng Pan ¹ Jingjing Ye ¹ Yijing Yan ¹ Ailin Chen ¹ Xinyu Li ¹ Xin Jiang ^1,2 Wei Wang ¹ Xin Meng ¹ Shujian Chen ¹ Yu Gu ^3* Xuefeng Shi ^1,2*

• ¹ Tianjin Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, Tianjin Eye Institute, Tianjin Eye Hospital, Clinical College of Ophthalmology, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China
• ² School of Medicine, Nankai University, Tianjin, China
• ³ State Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology and MOE Frontiers Center for Brain Science, Institutes of Brain Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

The visual thalamus serves as a critical hub for feature preprocessing in visual processing pathways. Emerging evidence demonstrates that experience-dependent plasticity can be revealed by monocular deprivation (MD) in the dorsolateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) of the thalamus. However, whether and how this thalamic plasticity induces changes in multiple receptive field properties and the potential mechanisms remain unclear. Using in vivo electrophysiology, here we show that binocular neurons in the dLGN of 4-day MD mice starting at P28 undergo a significant ocular dominance (OD) shift during the critical period. This OD plasticity could be attributed to the potentiation of ipsilateral eye responses but not to the depression of deprived eye responses, contrasting with conventional observations in the primary visual cortex (V1).The direction and orientation selectivity of ipsilateral eye responses, but not of contralateral eye responses in these neurons, were dramatically reduced.Developmental analysis revealed pre-critical and critical period-associated changes in densities of both GABA positive neurons and GABAA receptor α1 subunit (GABRA1) positive neurons. However, early compensatory inhibition from V1 feedback in P18 MD mice maintained network stability with no changes in OD and feature selectivity. Mechanistically, pharmacological activation of GABAA receptors rescued the MDinduced OD shifts and feature selectivity impairments in critical period MD mice, operating independently of the V1 feedback. Furthermore, under different contrast levels and spatial frequencies, these critical period-associated changes in receptive field properties still indicate alterations in ipsilateral eye responses alone. Together, these Moved down [2]: Furthermore, under different contrast levels and spatial frequencies, these changes in receptive field properties still indicate alterations in ipsilateral eye responses alone. Developmental analysis revealed