Biomedical subjects

Lynne Kiorpes

Publications and source records attributed to Lynne Kiorpes.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Development of visually evoked cortical activity in infant macaque monkeys studied longitudinally with fMRI.

We studied the development of visual activation longitudinally in two infant monkeys aged 103-561 days using the BOLD fMRI technique under opiate anesthesia and compared the results with those obtained in three adult animals studied under identical conditions. Visual activation in primary visual cortex, V1, was strong and reliable in monkeys of the youngest and oldest ages, showing that functional imaging techniques give qualitatively similar results in infants and adults. Visual activation in extrastriate areas involved in processing motion (MT/V5) and form (V4) was not evident in the younger animals, but became more adult-like in the older animals. This delayed onset of measurable BOLD responses in extrastriate visual cortex may reflect delayed development of visual responses in these areas, although at this stage it is not possible to rule out either effects of anesthesia or of changes in cerebral vascular response mechanisms as the cause. The demonstration of visually evoked BOLD responses in young monkeys shows that the BOLD fMRI technique can usefully be employed to address functional questions of brain development.

Animals↗

PubMed2006

Visual processing in amblyopia: animal studies.

In the past five years, substantial progress has been made in our knowledge of the neural basis of amblyopia. Recent advances based on animal models are described, along with new psychophysical data showing perceptual deficits in amblyopic animals that are not explained by simple losses in contrast sensitivity. Studies of contour integration and integration of motion and form signals in the presence of noise show that 1) there are fundamental losses in temporal as well as spatial vision, 2) the losses extend to the fellow eye in many cases, 3) amblyopic animals are especially impaired in the presence of background noise, and 4) these losses must depend on a process downstream from area V1 in the extrastriate cortex.

Amblyopia↗

PubMed2005

Functional maturation of the macaque's lateral geniculate nucleus.

Vision in infant primates is poor, but it is not known which structures in the eye or brain set the main limits to its development. We studied the visual response properties of 348 neurons recorded in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of macaque monkeys aged 1 week to adult. We measured spatial and temporal frequency tuning curves and contrast responses with drifting achromatic sinusoidal gratings. Even in animals as young as 1 week, the main visual response properties of neurons in the magnocellular (M) and parvocellular (P) divisions of the LGN were qualitatively normal, including the spatial organization of receptive fields and the characteristic response properties that differentiate M- and P-cells. At 1 and 4 weeks, spatial and temporal resolution were less than one-half of adult values, whereas contrast gain and peak response rates for optimal stimuli were about two-thirds of adult values. Adult levels were reached by 24 weeks. Analysis of correlations between S-potentials representing retinal inputs and LGN cells suggested that the LGN follows retinal input as faithfully in infants as in adults, implicating retinal development as the main driving force in LGN development. Comparisons with previously published psychophysical data and ideal observer models suggest that the relatively modest changes in LGN responses during maturation impose no significant limits on visual performance. In contrast to previous studies, we conclude that these limits are set by neural development in the visual cortex, not in or peripheral to the LGN.

Age Factors↗

PubMed2003

Ideal observer analysis of the development of spatial contrast sensitivity in macaque monkeys.

To explore the factors limiting the development of visual sensitivity, we constructed an ideal observer model for the infant macaque visual system. We made measurements of retinal morphology in infant and adult macaque monkeys, and used the data in combination with published optical data to formulate the model. We compared the ideal observer's ability to detect low-contrast gratings presented either in isolation or in spatiotemporal noise with behavioral data obtained under matched conditions. The ideal observer showed some improvement in visual performance up to the age of 4 weeks, but little change thereafter. Behavioral data show extensive changes over the ages 5-50 wk, after the ideal observer's performance has become asymptotic. We conclude that the development of visual sensitivity in infant monkeys is not limited by changes in the front-end factors captured by the ideal observer model, at least after the age of 5 weeks. Using noise masking, we also estimated the variability of neural processing in comparison with the photon noise-limited ideal. We found that both additive and multiplicative components of this variability are elevated in infant monkeys, and improve (though not to ideal levels) during development. We believe that these changes all reflect maturation of visual processing in cortical circuits, and that no aspect of visual performance in the regime we studied is limited by the properties of the retina and photoreceptors, either in infant or in adult animals.

Animals↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Development of contour integration in macaque monkeys.

Studies of visual development show that basic metrics of visual development such as spatial resolution develop over the first 6-9 months in monkeys and over the first 6 or so years in humans. However, more complex visual functions may develop over different, or more protracted, time courses. To address the question of whether global perceptual processing is linked to or otherwise dependent on the development of basic spatial vision, we studied the development of contour integration, a global perceptual task, in comparison to that of grating acuity in macaque monkeys. We find that contour integration develops substantially later than acuity. Contour integration begins to develop at 5-6 months, near the time that acuity development is complete and continues to mature well into the second postnatal year. We discuss this later development in terms poor central efficiency and consider the relevant anatomy and physiology of the developing visual system. We conclude that contour integration is not likely to be limited by the same mechanisms that are permissive to acuity development, and may instead reflect the emergence of function central to V1.

Aging↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Contour integration in amblyopic monkeys.

Amblyopia is characterized by losses in a variety of aspects of spatial vision, such as acuity and contrast sensitivity. Our goal was to learn whether those basic spatial deficits lead to impaired global perceptual processing in strabismic and anisometropic amblyopia. This question is unresolved by the current human psychophysical literature. We studied contour integration and contrast sensitivity in amblyopic monkeys. We found deficient contour integration in anisometropic as well as strabismic amblyopic monkeys. Some animals showed poor contour integration in the fellow eye as well as in the amblyopic eye. Orientation jitter of the elements in the contour systematically decreased contour-detection ability for control and fellow eyes, but had less effect on amblyopic eyes. The deficits were not clearly related to basic losses in contrast sensitivity and acuity for either type of amblyopia. We conclude that abnormal contour integration in amblyopes reflects disruption of mechanisms that are different from those that determine acuity and contrast sensitivity, and are likely to be central to V1.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Development of sensitivity to visual motion in macaque monkeys.

The development of spatial vision is relatively well documented in human and nonhuman primates. However, little is known about the development of sensitivity to motion. We measured the development of sensitivity to direction of motion, and the relationship between motion and contrast sensitivity in macaque monkeys as a function of age. Monkeys (Macaca nemestrina, aged between 10 days and 3 years) discriminated direction of motion in random-dot kinematograms. The youngest monkeys showed directionally selective orienting and the ability to integrate motion signals at large dot displacements and fast speeds. With age, coherence sensitivity improved for all spatial and temporal dot displacements tested. The temporal interval between the dots was far less important than the spatial offset in determining the animals' performance at all but the youngest ages. Motion sensitivity improved well beyond the end of the first postnatal year, when mid-spatial-frequency contrast sensitivity reached asymptote, and continued for at least 3 years. Sensitivity to contrast at high spatial frequencies also continued to develop beyond the end of the first year. We conclude that the development of motion sensitivity depends on mechanisms beyond the low-level filters presumed to limit acuity and contrast sensitivity, and most likely reflects the function of extrastriate visual areas.

Aging↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Sensitivity to visual motion in amblyopic macaque monkeys.

Amblyopia is usually considered to be a deficit in spatial vision. But there is evidence that amblyopes may also suffer specific deficits in motion sensitivity as opposed to losses that can be explained by the known deficits in spatial vision. We measured sensitivity to visual motion in random dot displays for strabismic and anisometropic amblyopic monkeys. We used a wide range of spatial and temporal offsets and compared the performance of the fellow and amblyopic eye for each monkey. The amblyopes were severely impaired at detecting motion at fine spatial and long temporal offsets, corresponding to fine spatial scale and slow speeds. This impairment was also evident for the untreated fellow eyes of strabismic but not anisometropic amblyopes. Motion sensitivity functions for amblyopic eyes were shifted toward large spatial scales for amblyopic compared to fellow eyes, to a degree that was correlated with the shift in scale of the spatial contrast sensitivity function. Amblyopic losses in motion sensitivity, however, were not correlated with losses in spatial contrast sensitivity. This, combined with the specific impairment for detecting long temporal offsets, reveals a deficit in spatiotemporal integration in amblyopia which cannot be explained by the lower spatial resolution of amblyopic vision.

Amblyopia↗