Auditory responses in the visual cortex of neonatally enucleated rats

A number of studies on humans and animals have demonstrated better auditory abilities in blind with respect to sighted subjects and have tried to define the mechanisms through which this compensation occurs. The aim of the present study, therefore, was to examine the participation of primary visual cortex (V1) to auditory processing in early enucleated rats. Here we show, using gaussian noise bursts, that about a third of the cells in V1 responded to auditory stimulation in blind rats and most of these (78%) had ON-type responses and low spontaneous activity. Moreover, they were distributed throughout visual cortex without any apparent tonotopic organization. Optimal frequencies determined using pure tones were rather high but comparable to those found in auditory cortex of blind and sighted rats. On the other hand, sensory thresholds determined at these frequencies were higher and bandwidths were wider in V1 of the blind animals. Blind and sighted rats were also stimulated for 60 min with gaussian noise, their brains removed and processed for c-Fos immunohistochemistry. Results revealed that c-Fos positive cells were not only present in auditory cortex of both groups of rats but there was a 10-fold increase in labeled cells in V1 and a fivefold increase in secondary visual cortex (V2) of early enucleated rats in comparisons to sighted ones. Also, the pattern of distribution of these labeled cells across layers suggests that the recruitment of V1 could originate at least in part through inputs arising from the thalamus. The ensemble of results appears to indicate that cross-modal compensation leading to improved performance in the blind depends on cell recruitment in V1 but probably also plastic changes in lower- and higher-order visual structures and possibly in the auditory system.