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.