The role of visual experience in the development of cat striate cortex

By the third postnatal week, intrinsic developmental programs have established a framework within the cat visual system; this will be used to guide the course of subsequent experience-dependent development. Key elements in this framework are precociously mature cells in visual cortex area 17. These orientation-selective cells are predominantly first-order neurons, they are concentrated in layers IV and VI of area 17, most of them are activated monocularly, many may receive their direct excitatory input from lateral geniculate nucleus X cells, and the distribution of their preferred orientations is biased toward horizontal and vertical. Between the third and the sixth postnatal week, most of the remaining cells in area 17 develop orientation selectivity; this extension of orientation selectivity is blocked or delayed if kittens are deprived of normal patterned visual stimulation. Furthermore, exposure to a limited range of stimulus orientations can lead to an increase in the proportion of orientation-selective cells, and the range of orientation preferences that the cells acquire is restricted by the range of orientations to which the animal is exposed. This occurs with no apparent change in the physiology or morphology of intrinsically selective area 17 cells. Thus selective exposure may have its effect by influencing the connections between the intrinsically selective cells and higher-order neurons in area 17. Experience-dependent changes in the visual system may function to "fine-tune" sensory processing and thus optimize the system's response to the dominant features of the environment. This experience-dependent process could help the young animal to focus its "attention" on those features of its environment that are critical to its survival.