Bilateral Retinofugal Pathfinding Impairments Limit Behavioral Compensation in Near-Congenital One-Eyed .

To generate a coherent visual percept, information from both eyes must be appropriately transmitted into the brain, where binocular integration forms the substrate for visuomotor behaviors. To establish the anatomical substrate for binocular integration, the presence of bilateral eyes and interaction of both optic nerves during retinotectal development play a key role. However, the extent to which embryonic monocularly derived visual circuits can convey visuomotor behaviors is unknown.

Developmental eye motion plasticity after unilateral embryonic ear removal in .

Gaze stabilization relies on bilateral mirror-symmetric vestibular endorgans, central circuits, and extraocular motor effectors. Embryonic removal of one inner ear before the formation of these structures was used to evaluate the extent to which motor outputs in the presence of a singular inner ear can develop. Near-congenital one-eared tadpoles subjected to separate or combinatorial visuo-vestibular motion stimulation exhibited comparable eye movements, though smaller in gain to controls, whereas isolated visuo-motor responses were unaltered.

Vestibular Influence on Vertebrate Skeletal Symmetry and Body Shape.

Vestibular endorgans in the vertebrate inner ear form the principal sensors for head orientation and motion in space. Following the evolutionary appearance of these organs in pre-vertebrate ancestors, specific sensory epithelial patches, such as the utricle, which is sensitive to linear acceleration and orientation of the head with respect to earth's gravity, have become particularly important for constant postural stabilization. This influence operates through descending neuronal populations with evolutionarily conserved hindbrain origins that directly and indirectly control spinal motoneurons of axial and limb muscles.

Acute consequences of a unilateral VIIIth nerve transection on vestibulo-ocular and optokinetic reflexes in Xenopus laevis tadpoles.

Loss of peripheral vestibular function provokes severe impairments of gaze and posture stabilization in humans and animals. However, relatively little is known about the extent of the instantaneous deficits. This is mostly due to the fact that in humans a spontaneous loss often goes unnoticed initially and targeted lesions in animals are performed under deep anesthesia, which prevents immediate evaluation of behavioral deficits.

Impact of 4-aminopyridine on vestibulo-ocular reflex performance.

Vestibulo-ocular reflexes (VOR) are mediated by frequency-tuned pathways that separately transform the different dynamic and static aspects of head motion/position-related sensory signals into extraocular motor commands. Voltage-dependent potassium conductances such as those formed by Kv1.1 are important for the ability of VOR circuit elements to encode highly transient motion components.

I spy with my little eye: a simple behavioral assay to test color sensitivity on digital displays.

Passive and interactive virtual reality (VR) environments are becoming increasingly popular in the field of behavioral neuroscience. While the technique was originally developed for human observers, corresponding applications have been adopted for the research of visual-driven behavior and neural circuits in animals. RGB color reproduction using red, green and blue primary color pixels is generally calibrated for humans, questioning if the distinct parameters are also readily transferable to other species.

Transplantation of Ears Provides Insights into Inner Ear Afferent Pathfinding Properties.

Numerous tissue transplantations have demonstrated that otocysts can develop into normal ears in any location in all vertebrates tested thus far, though the pattern of innervation of these transplanted ears has largely been understudied. Here, expanding on previous findings that transplanted ears demonstrate capability of local brainstem innervation and can also be innervated themselves by efferents, we show that inner ear afferents grow toward the spinal cord mostly along existing afferent and efferent fibers and preferentially enter the dorsal spinal cord. Once in the dorsal funiculus of the spinal cord, they can grow toward the hindbrain and can diverge into vestibular nuclei.