Cortical GABAergic Interneurons in Cross-Modal Plasticity following Early Blindness
Figure 5
Visually guided behavior in SC + ICb lesioned (or rewired) hamsters. (a) Example of the experimental setup with visual stimuli and Y maze. (b) Histograms showing trials to criterion on the visual discrimination tasks in normal hamsters before and after ablation of visual (VC) and auditory (AC) cortices. (c) Behavior of rewired hamsters before and after AC lesions. At the behavioral level, rewired hamsters can learn visual discrimination tasks as well as normal ones and a lesion of the auditory cortex abolishes this function. In fact, SC + ICb lesioned hamsters with auditory cortex lesions exhibit cortical blindness (*) similar to normal hamsters with visual cortex lesions. These results provide strong evidence for sensory substitution where a given sensory modality acquires the functional properties of a missing one. Adapted from Frost et al. [103] and Ptito et al. [95].
