Maturation of the electroretinogram of the neonatal rabbit

Structural and functional maturation of the retina of the albino Hartley guinea pig

“…This is however in sharp contrast with reports demonstrating a significant maturation of the retinal signal in altricial animals, such as rodents [8,45,46], rabbits [9][10][11]47], cats [1,2] and dogs [3,4] where a significant maturation of the retina takes place after birth and the first ERG manifestation is usually obtained at eye opening (normally during the second week of life). However, notwithstanding the fact that guinea pigs are born with an ERG response of adult-like morphology [32,33,44,48], all its components (e.g.…”

“…In their study on the functional development of the kitten's retina, Hamasaki et al [1] showed that it proceeded in three distinct steps, where the first step was characterized by the gradual appearance of the b-wave and the oscillatory potentials (OPs), followed by (second step) a rapid growth in amplitude of the all the ERG components (a-bwaves, OPs) and finally (third step) a slow differentiation of the properties of the retina that spread over several months. Gorfinkel et al [10], in their study of the postnatal maturation of the rabbit ERG also reported that the a-wave was the only component recorded at the opening of the eyes (P8) and was followed a few days later by the b-wave and OPs. A similar sequence of event was also reported for newborn rats, albeit delayed by nearly a week since, in the latter, eye opening occurs at P14 [8,14].…”

“…As a consequence of this retinal immaturity, an electroretinogram (ERG) cannot be recorded at birth from altricial animals. As a rule, the first ERG component recorded is usually a negative wave, which is observed for the first time at the opening of the eye [4,10,13,22]. The other components of the ERG (e.g.…”

“…Most studies that examined the postnatal development of the retina did so in animals, such as cats [1,2], dogs [3,4], rats [5][6][7][8], rabbits [9][10][11] and mice [12,13] that are born with an immature visual system and closed eyes (altricial animals). In altricial animals, the opening of the eyes varies with species (ie: rats: P14; rabbit P8; mice P13) but usually occurs during the second week of life [8,9,13].…”

The effect of iodoacetic acid on the electroretinogram and oscillatory potentials in rabbits

“…Five rabbits received a single injection of IAA, and three rabbits received two consecutive injections of IAA. Amplitude and peak time measurements of the b-wave and OPs were performed according to a previously published method [4]. Figure 1 illustrates the ERGs and OPs simultaneously recorded from two different rabbits before and at various time intervals after a bolus intravenous injection of 15 mg/kg of IAA.…”