Skip to main content

Umbrella menu

  • SfN.org
  • eNeuro
  • The Journal of Neuroscience
  • Neuronline
  • BrainFacts.org

Main menu

  • HOME
  • CONTENT
    • Early Release
    • Latest Articles
    • Issue Archive
    • Video Archive
    • Editorials
    • Research Highlights
  • TOPICS
    • Cognition and Behavior
    • Development
    • Disorders of the Nervous System
    • History, Teaching and Public Awareness
    • Integrative Systems
    • Neuronal Excitability
    • Novel Tools and Methods
    • Sensory and Motor Systems
  • ALERTS
  • FOR AUTHORS
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • BLOG
  • ABOUT
    • Overview
    • Advertise
    • For the Media
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact Us
    • Feedback
  • SfN.org
  • eNeuro
  • The Journal of Neuroscience
  • Neuronline
  • BrainFacts.org

User menu

  • My alerts

Search

  • Advanced search
eNeuro
  • My alerts
eNeuro

Advanced Search

Submit a Manuscript
  • HOME
  • CONTENT
    • Early Release
    • Latest Articles
    • Issue Archive
    • Video Archive
    • Editorials
    • Research Highlights
  • TOPICS
    • Cognition and Behavior
    • Development
    • Disorders of the Nervous System
    • History, Teaching and Public Awareness
    • Integrative Systems
    • Neuronal Excitability
    • Novel Tools and Methods
    • Sensory and Motor Systems
  • ALERTS
  • FOR AUTHORS
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • BLOG
  • ABOUT
    • Overview
    • Advertise
    • For the Media
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact Us
    • Feedback
PreviousNext
Research ArticleNew Research, Sensory and Motor Systems

Long-Term Visual Training Increases Visual Acuity and Long-Term Monocular Deprivation Promotes Ocular Dominance Plasticity in Adult Standard Cage-Raised Mice

Leon Hosang, Rashad Yusifov and Siegrid Löwel
eNeuro 2 January 2018, 5 (1) ENEURO.0289-17.2017; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0289-17.2017
Leon Hosang
Department of Systems Neuroscience, J.F.B. Institut für Zoologie und Anthropologie, Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, D-37075, Germany Göttingen Graduate School of Neurosciences, Biophysics and Molecular Biosciences (GGNB), Göttingen, D-37077, Germany
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Rashad Yusifov
Department of Systems Neuroscience, J.F.B. Institut für Zoologie und Anthropologie, Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, D-37075, Germany Göttingen Graduate School of Neurosciences, Biophysics and Molecular Biosciences (GGNB), Göttingen, D-37077, Germany
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Siegrid Löwel
Department of Systems Neuroscience, J.F.B. Institut für Zoologie und Anthropologie, Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, D-37075, Germany Sensory Collaborative Research Center 889, University of Göttingen, D-37075 Göttingen, Germany
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Siegrid Löwel
  • Article
  • Figures & Data
  • Info & Metrics
  • eLetters
  • PDF
Loading

Abstract

For routine behavioral tasks, mice predominantly rely on olfactory cues and tactile information. In contrast, their visual capabilities appear rather restricted, raising the question whether they can improve if vision gets more behaviorally relevant. We therefore performed long-term training using the visual water task (VWT): adult standard cage (SC)-raised mice were trained to swim toward a rewarded grating stimulus so that using visual information avoided excessive swimming toward nonrewarded stimuli. Indeed, and in contrast to old mice raised in a generally enriched environment (Greifzu et al., 2016), long-term VWT training increased visual acuity (VA) on average by more than 30% to 0.82 cycles per degree (cyc/deg). In an individual animal, VA even increased to 1.49 cyc/deg, i.e., beyond the rat range of VAs. Since visual experience enhances the spatial frequency threshold of the optomotor (OPT) reflex of the open eye after monocular deprivation (MD), we also quantified monocular vision after VWT training. Monocular VA did not increase reliably, and eye reopening did not initiate a decline to pre-MD values as observed by optomotry; VA values rather increased by continued VWT training. Thus, optomotry and VWT measure different parameters of mouse spatial vision. Finally, we tested whether long-term MD induced ocular dominance (OD) plasticity in the visual cortex of adult [postnatal day (P)162–P182] SC-raised mice. This was indeed the case: 40–50 days of MD induced OD shifts toward the open eye in both VWT-trained and, surprisingly, also in age-matched mice without VWT training. These data indicate that (1) long-term VWT training increases adult mouse VA, and (2) long-term MD induces OD shifts also in adult SC-raised mice.

  • cortical plasticity
  • intrinsic signal optical imaging
  • mouse vision
  • optomotry
  • visual water task

Footnotes

  • The authors declare no competing financial interests.

  • This work was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany, Grant 01GQ0810 (to S.L.) and by a grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the Collaborative Research Center 889 “Cellular Mechanisms of Sensory Processing” (Project B5; to S.L.).

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.

View Full Text
Back to top

In this issue

eneuro: 5 (1)
eNeuro
Vol. 5, Issue 1
January/February 2018
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author
Email

Thank you for sharing this eNeuro article.

NOTE: We request your email address only to inform the recipient that it was you who recommended this article, and that it is not junk mail. We do not retain these email addresses.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Long-Term Visual Training Increases Visual Acuity and Long-Term Monocular Deprivation Promotes Ocular Dominance Plasticity in Adult Standard Cage-Raised Mice
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from eNeuro
(Your Name) thought you would be interested in this article in eNeuro.
Print
View Full Page PDF
Article Alerts
Sign In to Email Alerts with your Email Address
Citation Tools
Long-Term Visual Training Increases Visual Acuity and Long-Term Monocular Deprivation Promotes Ocular Dominance Plasticity in Adult Standard Cage-Raised Mice
Leon Hosang, Rashad Yusifov, Siegrid Löwel
eNeuro 2 January 2018, 5 (1) ENEURO.0289-17.2017; DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0289-17.2017

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Respond to this article
Share
Long-Term Visual Training Increases Visual Acuity and Long-Term Monocular Deprivation Promotes Ocular Dominance Plasticity in Adult Standard Cage-Raised Mice
Leon Hosang, Rashad Yusifov, Siegrid Löwel
eNeuro 2 January 2018, 5 (1) ENEURO.0289-17.2017; DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0289-17.2017
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Significance Statement
    • Introduction
    • Materials and Methods
    • Results
    • Discussion
    • Acknowledgments
    • Footnotes
    • References
    • Synthesis
  • Figures & Data
  • Info & Metrics
  • eLetters
  • PDF

Keywords

  • cortical plasticity
  • intrinsic signal optical imaging
  • mouse vision
  • optomotry
  • visual water task

Responses to this article

Respond to this article

Jump to comment:

No eLetters have been published for this article.

Related Articles

Cited By...

More in this TOC Section

New Research

  • Sleep-state dependent alterations in brain functional connectivity under urethane anesthesia in a rat model of early-stage Parkinson’s disease
  • Selective activation of cholecystokinin-expressing γ-aminobutyric acid (CCK-GABA) neurons enhances memory and cognition
  • A poly-glutamine region in the Drosophila vesicular acetylcholine transporter dictates fill-level of cholinergic synaptic vesicles
Show more New Research

Sensory and Motor Systems

  • Beyond motor noise: considering other causes of impaired reinforcement learning in cerebellar patients
  • The role of the voltage-gated potassium channel proteins Kv8.2 and Kv2.1 in vision and retinal disease: insights from the study of mouse gene knock-out mutations
  • Narrowly confined and glomerulus-specific onset latencies of odor-evoked calcium transients in the juxtaglomerular cells of the mouse main olfactory bulb
Show more Sensory and Motor Systems

Subjects

  • Sensory and Motor Systems
    • New Research
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Alerts
  • Visit Society for Neuroscience on Facebook
  • Follow Society for Neuroscience on Twitter
  • Follow Society for Neuroscience on LinkedIn
  • Visit Society for Neuroscience on Youtube
  • Follow our RSS feeds

Articles

  • Early Release
  • Latest Articles
  • Issue Archive
  • Video Archive
  • Editorials
  • Research Highlights

For Authors

  • Information for Authors
  • Contact Information

About

  • Overview
  • Editorial Board
  • Advertise
  • For the Media
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us
  • Feedback
(eNeuro logo)
(SfN logo)

Copyright © 2019 by the Society for Neuroscience.

eNeuro eISSN: 2373-2822