Lesions of the cerebral cortex sustained early in life provoke system-wide repercussions that include substantial rewiring of remaining subcortical and cortical pathways. These repercussions contribute significantly to functional compensations by cortical neurons and to the sparing of cognitive and perceptual processes that are profoundly impaired following equivalent damage incurred by the mature brain. The long-term goal of the proposed work is to identify the classes of functions that are spared by the early cortical damage, and to identify the neural basis of the sparing.
The specific aim of the proposed work is to investigate the contributions which the expanded visual pathway through LGN to cortical area PMLS makes to operations spared by early lesions of areas 17 and 18. Studies will be carried out on cats which incurred damage of areas 17 and 18 on the day of birth or at one month of age, and comparison data will be collected from intact cats and cats which incurred equivalent damage in adulthood. Two projects are proposed: 1) to reveal the components and obtain a measure of the strength-of-coupling in the expanded retino-LGN- PMLS pathway. From these data we will infer the types of visual signals that are transmitted through LGN to cortex; and, 2) to uncouple the expanded retino-LGN-PMLS pathway in mature cats to ascertain the contribution the pathway makes to the spared behaviors. A battery of behavioral tests will be employed for functions normally associated with area PMLS, with damaged areas 17 and 18, and with the X and Y signal streams. The behavioral tasks will reveal the importance of the retino- LGN-pathway expansions to the spared behaviors. The proposed work will provide detailed information on the capacities of the immature brain to compensate for perceptual and cognitive functions lost or impaired following equivalent damage of the mature cerebrum. The identification of these capacities is important for steering future anatomical, physiological and behavioral efforts directed at comprehending the consequences of early cerebral cortical damage, and for developing therapeutic strategies that attempt to enhance the sparing of cortical functions.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
2R01MH044647-05A2
Application #
2246120
Study Section
Cognitive Functional Neuroscience Review Committee (CFN)
Project Start
1995-09-15
Project End
1998-08-31
Budget Start
1995-09-15
Budget End
1996-08-31
Support Year
5
Fiscal Year
1995
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Boston University
Department
Anatomy/Cell Biology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
604483045
City
Boston
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02118
Lomber, S G; Payne, B R (2001) Perinatal-lesion-induced reorganization of cerebral functions revealed using reversible cooling deactivation and attentional tasks. Cereb Cortex 11:194-209
MacNeil, M A; Lomber, S G; Payne, B R (1997) Thalamic and cortical projections to middle suprasylvian cortex of cats: constancy and variation. Exp Brain Res 114:24-32
Sun, J S; Lomber, S G; Payne, B R (1994) Expansion of suprasylvian cortex projection in the superficial layers of the superior colliculus following damage of areas 17 and 18 in developing cats. Vis Neurosci 11:13-22
Lomber, S G; Payne, B R; Cornwell, P et al. (1993) Capacity of the retinogeniculate pathway to reorganize following ablation of visual cortical areas in developing and mature cats. J Comp Neurol 338:432-57
Peters, A; Payne, B R (1993) Numerical relationships between geniculocortical afferents and pyramidal cell modules in cat primary visual cortex. Cereb Cortex 3:69-78
Shupert, C; Cornwell, P; Payne, B (1993) Differential sparing of depth perception, orienting, and optokinetic nystagmus after neonatal versus adult lesions of cortical areas 17, 18, and 19 in the cat. Behav Neurosci 107:633-50
Payne, B R (1993) Evidence for visual cortical area homologs in cat and macaque monkey. Cereb Cortex 3:1-25
Pearson, H E; Payne, B R; Cunningham, T J (1993) Microglial invasion and activation in response to naturally occurring neuronal degeneration in the ganglion cell layer of the postnatal cat retina. Brain Res Dev Brain Res 76:249-55
Mendola, J D; Payne, B R (1993) Direction selectivity and physiological compensation in the superior colliculus following removal of areas 17 and 18. Vis Neurosci 10:1019-26
Payne, B R; Siwek, D F (1991) The visual map in the corpus callosum of the cat. Cereb Cortex 1:173-88

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