Relationship between monocularly deprivation and amblyopia rats and visual system development

ObjectiveTo explore the changes of lateral geniculate body and visual cortex in monocular strabismus and form deprived amblyopic rat, and visual development plastic stage and visual plasticity in adult rats.MethodsA total of 60 SD rats ages 13 d were randomly divided into A, B, C three groups with 20 in each group, group A was set as the normal control group without any processing, group B was strabismus amblyopic group, using the unilateral extraocular rectus resection to establish the strabismus amblyopia model, group C was monocular form deprivation amblyopia group using unilateral eyelid edge resection + lid suture. At visual developmental early phase (P25), meta phase (P35), late phase (P45) and adult phase (P120), the lateral geniculate body and visual cortex area 17 of five rats in each group were exacted for C-fos Immunocytochemistry. Neuron morphological changes in lateral geniculate body and visual cortex was observed, the positive neurons differences of C-fos expression induced by light stimulation was measured in each group, and the condition of radiation development of P120 amblyopic adult rats was observed.ResultsIn groups B and C, C-fos positive cells were significantly lower than the control group at P25 (P<0.05), there was no statistical difference of C-fos protein positive cells between group B and group A (P>0.05), C-fos protein positive cells level of group B was significantly lower than that of group A (P<0.05). The binoculus C-fos protein positive cells level of groups B and C were significantly higher than that of control group at P35, P45 and P120 with statistically significant differences (P<0.05).ConclusionsThe increasing of C-fos expression in geniculate body and visual cortex neurons of adult amblyopia suggests the visual cortex neurons exist a certain degree of visual plasticity.