Retinal waves in mice lacking the β2 subunit of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

9-9-2008

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Volume

105

Issue

36

DOI

10.1073/pnas.0807178105

Keywords

Gap junction; Lateral geniculate nucleus; Multielectrode array; Retinal ganglion cells; Retinogeniculate segregation

Abstract

The structural and functional properties of the visual system are disrupted in mutant animals lacking the β2 subunit of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. In particular, eye-specific retinogeniculate projections do not develop normally in these mutants. It is widely thought that the developing retinas of β2-/- mutants do not manifest correlated activity, leading to the notion that retinal waves play an instructional role in the formation of eye-specific retinogeniculate projections. By multielectrode array recordings, we show here that the β2-/- mutants have robust retinal waves during the formation of eye-specific projections. Unlike in WT animals, however, the mutant retinal waves are propagated by gap junctions rather than cholinergic circuitry. These results indicate that lack of retinal waves cannot account for the abnormalities that have been documented in the retinogeniculate pathway of the β2-/- mutants and suggest that other factors must contribute to the deficits in the visual system that have been noted in these animals. © 2008 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

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