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Updated: Aug 5, 2026

Using Looming Visual Stimuli to Evaluate Mouse Vision
Published on: June 13, 2019
Experience-dependent maturation of the spatial and temporal characteristics of the cell receptive fields in the
E Gary-Bobo1, J Przybyslawski, P Saillour
1Institut des Neurosciences, Neurosciences de la Vision, UPMC-CNRS, Paris, France.
Abstract:
The development of contrast sensitivity to spatial and temporal frequencies was studied in the visual cortex of 6-week-old kittens reared from birth in three conditions: normal, dark-reared (DR) and dark-reared after 6 h of visual experience. Receptive fields of cells recorded in area 17 were quantitatively analysed using drifting sine-wave gratings. Compared to the low values obtained in the DR kittens, we observed after 6 h of visual experience: (1) an adult-like detection of higher spatial frequencies, (2) an increase of contrast sensitivity at low temporal frequencies; (3) a shift of the cell optimum towards 3 Hz, all values close to the normal ones. Unlike the spatial frequency selectivity, contrast sensitivity and detection of higher temporal frequencies continue to develop with age and visual experience.

