In: Biology
How can I quantify visual cortex development of blind rats and normal rats?
What variable do I have to measure for that and by which stain method?
Answer to above question
Basically visual cortex of the brain is that part of cerebral cortex ,that processes visual information and is located in the occipital lobe. Visual nerves travelstraight from the eye to the primary visual cortex to the visual association cortex.
Blind rats use head direction information to solve any tasks.Recent studies suggest that auditory senses of such rat recieves signal which guide their behaviour how to perform any type of task.Visual cortex in rats is immature in earlier age while in adults it tends to be discrete.That is visual development took place when they are adult like.
To quantify visual cortex development of normal rats and blind rats we can put food particles in front of these rats normal rats will directly reach the food particles while blind rats will move their head and slowly reach the food particles.Based on these concept we can design different types of electrode which will sense the development of visual cortex.
Different synaptic pattern studies related to can be used as variables to study visual cortex development of rats like the distributions of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and zinc-containing boutons and their cells of origin in the visual cortex of the rats .Acetylcholinesterase and zinc staining can be used to measure visual cortex development.