Investigating the roles of excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms in binocular matching during development

Visual processing is the ability of the brain to analyze and interpret visual information received from the eyes, and it is extensively studied in rodent primary visual cortex (V1) by revealing the relationship between neural circuitry and its functional behaviour. Within the V1, binocular neurons are crucial for stereopsis establishment and for various innate behaviours including navigation and predation. The development of binocular neurons requires vision stimulation since opening of eyes to reconstruct and modify the neural circuit according to the receptive field tunings. However, this binocular matching process is not well understood under both physiological and pathological conditions. To address this issue, we employed two-photon microscopy on juvenile mice and performed longitudinal imaging on neurons to track the contra- and ipsilateral responses from developmental stage (around postnatal day 25) to post-critical period (after postnatal day 35). We characterized the development of various visual features including binocular matching in both excitatory and inhibitory neurons and described the change in response from these neuron types. Furthermore, the binocular matching alteration in pathological conditions is investigated with activity-manipulation paradigm such as monocular deprivation and models of neurodevelopmental disorder. Our project wishes to strengthen our understanding on binocular matching process during developmental phase at dendritic spine, cellular and populational levels.