The influence of retinal afferents upon the development of layers in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus of mustelids.

The extent to which the development of a normal laminated lateral geniculate nucleus depends upon retinal afferents has been studied in normal and albino ferrets and in mink. Removal of all retinal afferents before they invade the nucleus (28 days in utero) or before they establish distinct monocular terminal fields (newborn, approximately 41 days post-conception) produces a nucleus that is smaller than normal and poorly separated from the adjacent perigeniculate and medial interlaminar nuclei. However, the nucleus is wedge-shaped, resembling a normal adult nucleus, in which a broad medial binocular segment is distinguishable from a narrower lateral monocular segment. There is a normal mediolateral gradient of cell sizes and some signs of a laminar differentiation, cells next to the optic tract being morphologically distinguishable from cells near the optic radiation, but no cell-free interlaminar zones are formed. The development of a monocularly innervated nucleus depends on the size of the surviving retinal input. In normally pigmented ferrets or mink the crossed retinofugal component is larger than the uncrossed component. In the monocular animals one sees essentially a monocular set of geniculate layers on each side, with an appropriate asymmetry. Each nucleus can be regarded as representing the survival of those layers which would have been innervated by the good eye, together with some additional geniculate territory that appears to be added to the surviving layers as retinogeniculate axons occupy territory normally innervated by the other eye. The crossed component of an albino ferret is abnormally large and the monocularly innervated contralateral nucleus is almost like that of a normal albino. There is a full complement of geniculate layers and interlaminar zones, which appears to develop without any binocular interactions. The ipsilateral retinogeniculate component of albinos is extremely small. In the monocular albino animals it forms discontinuous terminal patches, leaving sectors of the poorly differentiated nucleus uninnervated. These results show that in geniculate development there is a limited interaction between the two sets of retinal afferents. Each set plays a well defined and distinctive role, and one can replace the other to a limited extent only.