Information transmission in the primary visual cortex of retinal degenerated rats

To study the information transmission in the primary visual cortex (V1) of retinal degenerated (RD) models, wild type (WT) and RD rats were used in the experiments. The neural response in V1 was recorded extracellularly while the flicker with varied intensity levels was given as the visual stimulus. The mutual information (MI) and normalized mutual information (NMI) were determined for every isolated neuron, in order to quantify the amount and efficiency of information transmission in V1 of both control and experimental groups. The results showed that, on one hand, the RD group manifested relatively decreased information transmission amount and efficiency, comparing to the control group; On the other hand, it also implied that even for the RD rat, whose early stage of visual system was impaired, the later parts of visual system, especially the primary visual cortex, were still able to capture the information on visual stimulation, thus they can be utilized for restoring the visual ability, for example, via the visual prosthesis. In addition, it certainly requires more experiments for testifying and extending those results and implications.