ON and OFF field potentials in the rat superior colliculus during development

Oscillations in Spontaneous and Visually Evoked Neuronal Activity in the Superficial Layers of the Cat's Superior Colliculus

Oscillations are ubiquitous features of neuronal activity in sensory systems and are considered as a substrate for the integration of sensory information. Several studies have described oscillatory activity in the geniculate visual pathway, but little is known about this phenomenon in the extrageniculate visual pathway. We describe oscillations in evoked and background activity in the cat's superficial layers of the superior colliculus, a retinorecipient structure in the extrageniculate visual pathway. Extracellular single-unit activity was recorded during periods with and without visual stimulation under isoflurane anesthesia in the mixture of N₂O/O₂. Autocorrelation, FFT and renewal density analyses were used to detect and characterize oscillations in the neuronal activity. Oscillations were common in the background and stimulus-evoked activity. Frequency range of background oscillations spanned between 5 and 90 Hz. Oscillations in evoked activity were observed in about half of the cells and could appear in two forms —stimulus-phase-locked (10–100 Hz), and stimulus-phase-independent (8–100 Hz) oscillations. Stimulus-phase-independent and background oscillatory frequencies were very similar within activity of particular neurons suggesting that stimulus-phase-independent oscillations may be a form of enhanced “spontaneous” oscillations. Stimulus-phase-locked oscillations were present in responses to moving and flashing stimuli. In contrast to stimulus-phase-independent oscillations, the strength of stimulus-phase-locked oscillations was positively correlated with stimulus velocity and neuronal firing rate. Our results suggest that in the superficial layers of the superior colliculus stimulus-phase-independent oscillations may be generated by the same mechanism(s) that lie in the base of “spontaneous” oscillations, while stimulus-phase-locked oscillations may result from interactions within the intra-collicular network and/or from a phase reset of oscillations present in the background activity.

Enhanced visual responses in the superior colliculus in an animal model of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and their suppression by D-amphetamine

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by overactivity, impulsiveness and attentional problems, including an increase in distractibility. A structure that is intimately linked with distractibility is the superior colliculus (SC), a midbrain sensory structure which plays a particular role in the production of eye and head movements. Although others have proposed the involvement of such diverse elements as the frontal cortex and forebrain noradrenaline in ADHD, given the role of the colliculus in distractibility and the increased distractibility in ADHD, we have proposed that distractibility in ADHD arises due to collicular sensory hyper-responsiveness. To further investigate this possibility, we recorded the extracellular activity (multi-unit (MUA) and local field potential (LFP)) in the superficial visual layers of the SC in an animal model of ADHD, the New Zealand genetically hypertensive (GH) rat, in response to wholefield light flashes. The MUA and LFP peak amplitude and summed activity within a one-second time window post-stimulus were both significantly greater in GH rats than in Wistar controls, across the full range of stimulus intensities. Given that baseline firing rate did not differ between the strains, this suggests that the signal-to-noise ratio is elevated in GH animals. D-Amphetamine reduced the peak amplitude and summed activity of the multi-unit response in Wistar animals. It also reduced the peak amplitude and summed activity of the multi-unit response in GH animals, at higher doses bringing it down to levels that were equivalent to those of Wistar animals at baseline. The present results provide convergent evidence that a collicular dysfunction (sensory hyper-responsiveness) is present in ADHD, and that it may underlie the enhanced distractibility. In addition, D-amphetamine - a widely used treatment in ADHD - may have one of its loci of therapeutic action at the level of the colliculus.

Influence of NO downregulation on oscillatory evoked responses in developing rat superior colliculus

Nitric oxide (NO) is involved in neuronal transmission by modulating neurotransmitter release in adults and in stabilizing synaptic connections in developing brains. We investigated the influence of downregulation of NO synthesis on oscillatory components of ON and OFF evoked field potentials in the rat superior colliculus. NO synthesis was decreased by inhibiting nitric oxide synthase (NOS) with an acute microinjection of N(omega)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME). The study focuses on rhythmic activity by analyzing fast Fourier transform (FFT). Collicular responses were recorded in anesthetized rats, at postnatal days (PND) 13-19 and adults. This time window was chosen because it is centered on eye opening. NO downregulation resulted in a dual effect depending on age and response-type. NO synthesis inhibition decreased the magnitude of oscillations in ON responses in the youngest animals (PND13-14), whereas oscillations of frequencies higher than 20 Hz in OFF responses were increased in all age groups of developing rats. In adults NO downregulation increased oscillations in ON responses and decreased oscillations in OFF responses. L-Arginine was used to increase NOS activity and its injection produced effects opposite to those seen with L-NAME. Slow oscillatory components (7-12 Hz) were unaffected in all experiments. Our data together with results reported in the literature suggest that rhythmic patterns of activity are NO-dependent.

Developmental changes in BDNF protein levels in the hamster retina and superior colliculus

Quantitative studies of ontogenetic changes in the levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) mRNA and its effector, BDNF protein, are not available for the retinal projection system. We used an electrochemiluminescence immunoassay to measure developmental changes in the tissue concentration of BDNF within the hamster retina and superior colliculus (SC). In the SC, we first detected BDNF (about 9 pg/mg tissue) on embryonic day 14 (E14). BDNF protein concentration in the SC rises about fourfold between (E14) and postnatal day 4 (P4), remains at a plateau through P15, then declines by about one-third to attain its adult level by P18. By contrast, BDNF protein concentration in the retina remains low (about 1 pg/mg tissue) through P12, then increases 4.5-fold to attain its adult level on P18. The developmental changes in retinal and collicular BDNF protein concentrations are temporally correlated with multiple events in the structural and functional maturation of the hamster retinal projection system. Our data suggest roles for BDNF in the cellular mechanisms underlying some of these events and are crucial to the design of experiments to examine those roles.

Visual awareness due to neuronal activities in subcortical structures: a proposal

It has been shown that visual awareness in the blind hemifield of hemianopic cats that have undergone unilateral ablations of visual cortex can be restored by sectioning the commissure of the superior colliculus or by destroying a portion of the substantia nigra contralateral to the cortical lesion (the Sprague effect). We propose that the visual awareness that is recovered is due to synchronized oscillatory activities in the superior colliculus ipsilateral to the cortical lesion. These oscillatory activities are normally partially suppressed by the inhibitory, GABAergic contralateral nigrotectal projection, and the destruction of the substantia nigra, or the sectioning of the collicular commissure, disinhibits the collicular neurons, causing an increase in the extent of oscillatory activity and/or synchronization between activities at different sites. This increase in the oscillatory and synchronized character is sufficient for the activities to give rise to visual awareness. We argue that in rodents and lower vertebrates, normal visual awareness is partly due to synchronized oscillatory activities in the optic tectum and partly due to similar activities in visual cortex. It is only in carnivores and primates that visual awareness is wholly due to cortical activities. Based on von Baerian recapitulation theory, we propose that, even in humans, there is a period in early infancy when visual awareness is partially due to activities in the superior colliculus, but that this awareness gradually disappears as the nigrotectal projection matures.

Patterns of synchronization in the superior colliculus of anesthetized cats

Sensorimotor transformations in the mammalian superior colliculus (SC) are mediated by large sets of distributed neurons. For such distributed coding systems, stimulus superposition poses problems attributable to the merging of neural populations coding for different stimuli. Such superposition problems could be overcome by synchronization of neuronal discharges, because it allows the selection of a subset of distributed responses for further joint processing. To assess the putative role of such a temporal binding mechanism in the SC, we have applied correlation analysis to visually evoked collicular activity. We performed recordings of single-unit and multiunit activity in the SC of anesthetized and paralyzed cats with multiple electrodes. Autocorrelation analysis revealed that collicular neurons often discharged in broad (20-100 msec) bursts or with an oscillatory patterning in the alpha- and beta-frequency range. Significantly modulated cross-correlograms were observed in 50% (128 of 258) of the collicular multiunit recording pairs, and for these pairs significant correlations occurred in 44% of the stimulation epochs. For the single-unit pairs, significant interactions were observed in 14 of 48 cases studied (29%). Collicular cross-correlograms were often oscillatory, and these oscillations covered a broad frequency range of up to 100 Hz, with a predominance of oscillation frequencies in the alpha- and beta-range. In the majority of the significant correlograms (64%) the phase lag of the center peak was <5 msec. The probability of collicular synchronization increased with the overlap of the receptive fields and the proximity of the recording sites. Correlations were also observed between cells in the superficial and deep SC layers. Collicular synchronization required activation of the respective cells with a single coherent stimulus and broke down when the neurons were activated with two different stimuli. These data are consistent with the notion that collicular synchrony could define assemblies of functionally related cells.

Maturation of visual receptive field properties in the rat superior colliculus

Visually responsive neurons were recorded in the superficial layers of rat superior colliculus from postnatal day 12 to 28. Receptive field properties such as size, type (ON, OFF, ON-OFF and motion sensitive) and direction selectivity were analyzed to disclose changes during maturation. Although some aspects of sensory properties are modified during development (latency, receptive field sizes, and proportions of receptive field types), a high level of sophistication is also present in young animals even before eyelid opening. For instance, direction selective and direction biased cells, which require complex synaptic relations, are already observed when the first light evoked responses emerge in the superior colliculus (P13), strongly suggesting that this property develops without visual experience. Furthermore, direction selectivity is present in the colliculus prior to the appearance of visually evoked activity in the cortex. This indicates that direction selectivity can not be attributable to incoming cortical afferents. This study provides the first direct evidence that, unlike the cat, the rat's cortico-tectal pathway is only weakly involved in the establishment of direction selectivity in collicular neurons.