Morphology of retinal axons induced to arborize in a novel target, the medial geniculate nucleus. I. Comparison with arbors in normal targets.

Ferret retinal axons can be induced to innervate the medial geniculate nucleus (MGN) by a combination of brain lesions early in development. Our previous work suggests that the retinal ganglion cells responsible for this plasticity are W cells. The present study continues this work with a morphological investigation of normal retinal ganglion-cell axons and retinal ganglion-cell axons induced to arborize in the MGN. Retinal axons were bulk filled with horseradish peroxidase placed in the optic tract, and individual axons were serially reconstructed from sagittal sections. The control population consisted of fine-caliber axons arborizing in the superior colliculus (SC) and in the ventral C laminae of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of normal ferrets. We also compared the axons in the MGN of lesioned ferrets to intracellularly filled X and Y axons from normal ferrets as reported by Roe et al. ([1989] J. Comp. Neurol. 288:208). We have found that the retino-MGN axons in the lesioned ferrets do not resemble X or Y axons in normal ferrets in axon diameter, arbor volume, bouton number, or bouton density. However, they do resemble the fine-caliber, presumed W axons arborizing in the C laminae of the LGN and in the SC of normal ferrets. Thus, this study, in combination with previous studies, suggests strongly that W retinal ganglion cells are responsible for the retinal input to the MGN in lesioned animals. In addition, we find that the retino-MGN axons are of two types, branched and unbranched, which may correspond to different subtypes of retinal W cells.