Effects of dark rearing on the development of visual callosal connections

It is now well established that during normal postnatal development there is a partial elimination of the callosal projections of cortical areas 17 and 18 in the cat and that visual experience early in life can modulate this process. In the present experiments, we quantitatively studied the influence of light, per se, by rearing cats in total darkness. Dark rearing exaggerates the normally occurring partial elimination of immature callosal projections: it causes a significant reduction in the total number of neurons in both the supra- and infragranular layers that send an axon through the corpus callosum and slightly narrows the distribution of these neurons across areas 17 and 18. These data demonstrate that visual stimulation is not necessary either to initiate the partial elimination of immature callosal projections or to stabilize a large fraction of the callosal projections present at birth. However, normal visual stimulation is necessary for the stabilization of the normal complement of callosal projections.