DISTRIBUTION OF VISUAL CALLOSAL NEURONS IN NORMAL AND STRABISMIC CATS

It has been suggested that synchronous activation of cortical loci in the two cerebral hemispheres during development leads to the stabiliza tion of juvenile callosal connections in some areas of the visual cort ex. One way in which loci in opposite hemispheres can be synchronously activated is if they receive signals generated by the same stimulus v iewed through different eyes. These ideas lead to the prediction that shifts in the cortical representation of the visual field caused by mi salignment of the visual axes (strabismus) should change the width of the callosal zone in the striate cortex. We tested this prediction by using quantitative techniques to compare the tangential distribution o f callosal neurons in the striate cortex of strabismic cats to that in normally reared cats. Animals were rendered strabismic surgically at 8-10 days of age and were allowed to survive a minimum of 18 weeks, at which time multiple intracortical injections of the tracer horseradis h peroxidase (HRP) were used to reveal the distribution of callosally projecting cells in the contralateral striate cortex. HRP-labeled cell s were counted in coronal sections, and data from four animals with di vergent strabismus (exotropia) and four with convergent strabismus (es otropia) were compared to those from four normally reared animals. Alt hough our data from strabismic cats do not differ markedly from those reported previously, we find that the distribution of callosal cells i n the striate cortex of these cats does not differ significantly from that in our normally reared control cats. These results do not bear ou t the prediction that surgically shifting the visual axes leads to sta bilization of juvenile callosal axons in anomalous places within the s triate cortex. (C) 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.