Long-term callosal lesions and learning of a black-white discrimination by one-eyed rats

Abstract We know from our previous studies that mature rats with monocular enucleation at birth (OEBs), as well as animals enucleated at maturity (OETs), were unable to learn a black-white discrimination when they were trained after lesions of the visual cortex contralateral to the remaining eye. Since it is well known that synaptic reorganization takes place in the adult rat brain through reactive synaptogenesis following deafferentation, we wondered if long-term callosal lesions in OEBs and OETs would bring out such synaptic reorganization in the visual cortex and, consequently, affect the outcome of the discrimination mentioned above. In the present study, two experiments were carried out: in Experiment 1 the previous experiment was replicated in that OEBs and OETs of 3 months of age were trained on the discrimination 10 days following unilateral visual cortex lesions; in Experiment 2, effects of callosal lesions made 10 weeks earlier either at 3 weeks of age or 13 weeks of age were investigated. The results were: 1) the findings of the previous experiment were confirmed; 2) the long-term callosal lesions facilitated the acquisition of discrimination in OEBs but not in OETs; 3) the facilitative effects were more prominent in OEBs with callosal lesions at 3 weeks of age than in those at 13 weeks of age. The findings were discussed in relation to possible synaptic reorganization produced in the visual cortex ipsilateral to the remaining eye following callosal lesions made 10 weeks earlier and also in relation to reorganization of the uncrossed visual pathways resulting from monocular enucleation at birth.