Postnatal development of neuronal connections in cat visual cortex studied by intracellular recording in slice preparation

Postnatal development of neuronal connections in cat visual cortex (area 17) was studied in slice preparations obtained from kittens aged 1-18 weeks after birth and adult cats by recording intracellularly excitatory (EPSP) and inhibitory postsynaptic potentials (IPSP) evoked in cortical cells by stimulation of white matter. The EPSPs were already present in all cells at 1 week of age. Their efficiency assessed by their maximum rate of rise was low initially and increased progressively with age. In contrast, the IPSPs were absent in half of the cells at 1 week and almost all of the cells came to demonstrate inhibition by 9 weeks except for a few layer II-III cells. At all ages about three-quarters of the IPSPs had GABAA-mediated early and GABAB-mediated late components with different time courses, reversal potential and sensitivity to GABA antagonists, while the remaining IPSPs had only the early component. The efficiency of both IPSPs assessed by the associated conductance increase showed an increase of more than twice from 1 to 5 weeks, reaching the same level as adults. The time course of the development of inhibition demonstrated in this study paralleled the time course of the development of selective visual responsiveness in cortical cells, suggesting that the postnatal maturation of inhibitory connections is a basis of maturation of visual responsiveness.