Development of the dendritic fields of layer 3 pyramidal cells in the kitten's visual cortex

The cat's visual cortex is immature at birth and undergoes extensive postnatal development. For example, cells of layers 2 and 3 do not complete migration until about 3 weeks after birth. Despite the importance of dendritic growth for synaptic and functional development, there have been few studies of dendritic development in the cat's visual cortex to correlate with numerous studies of functional and synaptic development. Accordingly, we used the Golgi method to study the development of the dendrites of layer 3 pyramidal cells in the visual cortex of a series of cats ranging in age from 2 days to 3 years. Blocks of visual cortex were impregnated by the Golgi-Kopsch method and sectioned in the tangential plane. Layer 3 pyramidal cells were drawn with a camera lucida and analyzed by Sholl diagrams and vector addition. In kittens < 1 week old, these cells were very immature, with only an apical dendrite and no basal dendrites. Basal dendrites appeared during the second week. By 2 weeks, all of the basal dendrites had emerged from the soma, but they had few branches and were tipped with growth cones. By 4 weeks, they had finished branching but continued to grow in length until, by 5 weeks, they reached their adult size. Examination of the basal dendritic fields in the tangential plane revealed that their dendritic fields were more elongated at 2 weeks than at later ages, perhaps because of their smaller size. The distribution of dendritic field orientations was uniform at all ages except 3 and 4 weeks, when there was a preponderance of fields oriented in the rostrocaudal direction. Because dendritic growth and branching occurred very rapidly over a period that precedes and overlaps with the peak periods of synaptogenesis and of sensitivity to the effects of early visual experience, they may depend on afferent visual activity. The early emergence of primary dendrites, however, suggests that this process is independent of afferent activity. The coincident timing of dendritic branching with the presence of dendritic growth cones suggests that branching may occur at growth cones.