Relationships between segregated afferents and postsynaptic neurones in the optic tectum of three-eyed frogs

In 3-eyed frogs, afferents from 2 eyes converge on an optic tectum that normally receives input from only 1 eye. This produces an interdigitating series of stripes, resembling the ocular dominance columns in cats and monkeys. The consequences of this induced striping on the behavior of tectal dendrites was investigated in an in vitro preparation of the tectum. Stripes were labeled by anterograde transport of a fluorescent dye (rhodamine) and postsynaptic tectal cells labeled by intracellular injections of Lucifer yellow. The same types of cells were present in both normal and striped tecta, but dendritic arbors were altered in 2 ways. In normal tecta, dendrites were most frequently biased in a rostral direction. In striped tecta, dendrites were more frequently unbiased: fewer arbors had a strong rostral bias. The second effect of stripes was on the behaviors of individual dendrites of certain cell types. Some cells, primarily those with small, highly branched arbors, had dendrites that abruptly terminated at the borders between stripes. Other cells, with larger arbors, maintained "clumps" of dendrites in both eye's stripes. While these cells had portions of their dendritic arbor in more than one stripe, each individual dendrite was restricted to a single stripe. However, the processes of many cells, especially those with extensive, medial-laterally oriented dendrites, did not respect stripe boundaries in any obvious fashion. At the border between 2 stripes, there is an abrupt discontinuity in the patterns of activity in afferent axons. The dendritic alterations seen in striped tecta suggest that correlated activity can, in some cells, modulate the spatial arrangement of dendrites, such that an individual dendrite preferentially arborizes within such areas, but not between them. These cells as a whole can accommodate uncorrelated inputs, if these are segregated onto separate dendrites. This implies that local interactions between presynaptic terminals and postsynaptic dendrites, rather than action potentials in the postsynaptic cells, may furnish important signals for the modulation of dendritic arbor shape.