Responsive Neural Activities in the Primary Visual Cortex of Retina-Degenerated Rats

To study the responsive neural activities in the primary visual cortex (V1) of retinal degeneration (RD) models, experiments involving the wild-type (WT) and RD rats were conducted. The neural responses in the V1 were recorded extracellularly, while a visual stimulus with varied light intensity was given to the subjects. First, the firing rate and its relationship with light intensity were compared between the WT and RD groups. Second, the mutual information (MI) between the visual stimulus and neural response was determined for every isolated unit to quantify the amount and efficiency of information transmission in the V1 for both the control and experimental groups. Third, the local field potential (LFP) signal was characterized and its power used to compute the MI and further evaluate the function change in the RD model regarding information transmission. Analysis of spiking activity showed that the RD group exhibited a relatively decreased firing rate, information amount and efficiency compared with the control group. However, the information transmission performance of the RD model was similar to that of the WT group in the context of LFP activity. Therefore, for the RD rats, the early stage of the visual system was impaired, while the later stage of the visual system, V1, was able to capture the information about the visual stimulus, especially at the population level. Thus, this pathway could be used to restore visual ability, such as by visual prostheses.