Do Visual Circuits Mature Without Visual Stimuli

TL;DR: In this paper, pan-retinal recordings of mouse retinal waves were obtained at near cellular resolution using a large-scale, high-density array of 4096 electrodes to investigate changes in wave spatiotemporal properties from postnatal day 2 to eye opening.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a sequential model of cortical microcircuit development based on activity-dependent mechanisms of plasticity whereby neurons first acquire feature preference by selecting feedforward inputs before the onset of sensory experience, and then patterned input drives the formation of functional subnetworks through a redistribution of recurrent synaptic connections.

TL;DR: A sequential model of cortical microcircuit development is proposed based on activity-dependent mechanisms of plasticity whereby neurons first acquire feature preference by selecting feedforward inputs before the onset of sensory experience and then patterned input drives the formation of functional subnetworks through a redistribution of recurrent synaptic connections.

TL;DR: It is concluded that activity acts instructively to guide binocular segregation during development by altering the frequency of spontaneous waves of activity that sweep across the mammalian retina prior to vision.

TL;DR: It is found that radially aligned sister excitatory neurons have a propensity for developing unidirectional chemical synapses with each other rather than with neighbouring non-siblings, and these synaptic connections display the same interlaminar directional preference as those observed in the mature neocortex.

TL;DR: The results support the radial unit hypothesis and unify the ontogenetic and functional columns in the visual cortex and show that, despite the lack of a discernible orientation map in mouse visual cortex, sister neurons in the same radial clone exhibit similar orientation preferences.