SUMMARY Complex neural circuits in the mammalian brain develop through a combination of genetic instruction and activity-dependent refinement. The relative role of these factors and the form of neuronal activity responsible for circuit development is a matter of significant debate. In the mammalian visual system, retinal ganglion cell projections to the brain are mapped with respect to retinotopic location and eye of origin. We manipulated the pattern of spontaneous retinal waves present during development without changing overall activity levels through the transgenic expression of β2-nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in retinal ganglion cells of mice. We used this manipulation to demonstrate that spontaneous retinal activity is not just permissive, but instructive in the emergence of eye-specific segregation and retinotopic refinement in the mouse visual system. This suggests that specific patterns of spontaneous activity throughout the developing brain are essential in the emergence of specific and distinct patterns of neuronal connectivity.

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RGC degeneration depends on subtype and location in hypertensive eyes. This study introduces a valuable model to investigate how the structural and functional degeneration of RGCs leads to visual impairments.

The dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) receives visual information from the retina and transmits it to the cortex. In this study, we made extracellular recordings in the dLGN of both anesthetized and awake mice, and found that a surprisingly high proportion of cells were selective for stimulus orientation. The orientation selectivity of dLGN cells was unchanged after silencing the visual cortex pharmacologically, indicating that it is not due to cortical feedback. The orientation tuning of some dLGN cells correlated with their elongated receptive fields, while in others orientation selectivity was observed despite the fact that their receptive fields were circular, suggesting that their retinal input might already be orientation selective. Consistently, we revealed orientation/axis-selective ganglion cells in the mouse retina using multielectrode arrays in an in vitro preparation. Furthermore, the orientation tuning of dLGN cells was largely maintained at different stimulus contrasts, which could be sufficiently explained by a simple linear feedforward model. We also compared the degree of orientation selectivity in different visual structures under the same recording condition. Compared with the dLGN, orientation selectivity is greatly improved in the visual cortex, but is similar in the superior colliculus, another major retinal target. Together, our results demonstrate prominent orientation selectivity in the mouse dLGN, which may potentially contribute to visual processing in the cortex.

The superior colliculus (SC) is a layered midbrain structure important for multimodal integration and sensorimotor transformation. Its superficial layers are purely visual and receive depth-specific projections from distinct subtypes of retinal ganglion cells. Here we use two-photon calcium imaging to characterize the response properties of neurons in the most superficial lamina of the mouse SC, an undersampled population with electrophysiology. We find that these neurons have compact receptive fields with primarily overlapping ON and OFF subregions and are highly direction selective. The high selectivity is observed in both excitatory and inhibitory neurons. These neurons do not cluster according to their direction preference and lack orientation selectivity. In addition, we perform single-unit recordings and show that direction selectivity declines with depth in the SC. Together, our experiments reveal for the first time a highly specialized lamina in the most superficial SC for movement direction, a finding that has important implications for understanding signal transformation in the early visual system.

We demonstrated that the functional degeneration of RGCs is subtype-dependent and that the ON and OFF pathways from the retina to the SC were disrupted. Our study provides a foundation to investigate the mechanisms underlying the progressive vision loss in experimental glaucoma.

Through transcriptional regulations, the BarH family of homeodomain proteins play essential roles in cell fate specification, cell differentiation, migration, and survival. Barhl2, a member of the Barh gene family, is expressed in retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), amacrine cells (ACs), and horizontal cells. Here, to investigate the role of Barhl2 in retinal development, Barhl2-deficient mice were generated. Analysis of AC subtypes in Barhl2-deficient retinas suggests that Barhl2 plays a critical role in AC subtype determination. A significant reduction of glycinergic and GABAergic ACs with a substantial increase in the number of cholinergic ACs was observed in Barhl2-null retinas. Barhl2 is also critical for the development of a normal complement of RGCs. Barhl2 deficiency resulted in a 35% increase in RGCs undergoing apoptosis during development. Genetic analysis revealed that Barhl2 functions downstream of the Atoh7-Pou4f3 regulatory pathway and regulates the maturation and/or survival of RGCs. Thus, BARHL2 appears to have numerous roles in retinal development, including regulating neuronal subtype specification, differentiation, and survival.

The NLRP3 inflammasome, a sensor for a variety of pathogen- and host-derived threats, consists of the adaptor ASC (Apoptosis-associated Speck-like protein containing a Caspase Activation and Recruitment Domain (CARD)), pro-caspase-1, and NLRP3 (NOD-Like Receptor family Pyrin domain containing 3). NLRP3-induced neuroinflammation is implicated in the pathogenesis and progression of eye diseases, but it remains unclear whether activation of NLRP3 inflammasome contributes to retinal ganglion cell (RGC) death. Here we examined NLRP3-induced neuroinflammation and RGC survival following partial optic nerve crush (pONC) injury. We showed that NLRP3 was up-regulated in retinal microglial cells following pONC, propagating from the injury site to the optic nerve head and finally the entire retina within one day. Activation of NLRP3-ASC inflammasome led to the up-regulation of caspase-1 and a proinflammatory cytokine, interleukin-1β (IL-1β). In NLRP3 knockout mice, up-regulation of ASC, caspase-1, and IL-1β were all reduced, and, importantly, RGC and axon loss was substantially delayed following pONC injury. The average survival time of RGCs in NLRP3 knockout mice was about one week longer than for control animals. Taken together, our study demonstrated that ablating the NLRP3 gene significantly reduced neuroinflammation and delayed RGC loss after optic nerve crush injury.