| Summary: | The aim of this study was to investigate the intra- and intermodal impact of different kinds of early sensory experience on the development of specific neural/perceptual systems. The manipulations of the rats' early experience involved a combination of early binocular deprivation through dark-rearing, somatosensory restriction through cauterization of mystacial vibrissae, and multimodal enrichment through rearing in a complex environment. Specific lesions to somatosensory (Parl) and visual (Oc2M) cortex in differentially reared animals were included in an attempt to gain further insight into the plasticity surrounding manipulations of early stimulation history.
Five tasks were used to assess these effects of early rearing condition in combination with later cortical lesions. Behavioral assessment focused on the ability of the animals to encode, abstract, and remember specific relationships between stimuli within the deprived modality itself, their ability to do so with information presented in other modalities, and on the basic species specific behavior. The only effect found was a main effect for rearing condition. Basically, complex-reared rats were more competent on several of the behavioral tasks than were dark-reared rats. However, this result provided little behavioral support for ideas of modality interdependence.
Dendritic proliferation is considered to be a general mechanism supporting behavioral change. The subsequent neuroanatomical assessment focused on dendritic branching of neurons in specific cortical areas thought to be most affected by early environmental manipulations. Animals that were raised in a complex environment, but had experienced early tactile restriction through cauterization of vibrissae, showed significantly more dendritic branching than animals from all other rearing conditions in all cortical areas measured. This finding is consistent with ideas of both intra- and intermodal compensation following damage to an early developing modality, as well as behavioral demand acting as a significant factor in determining the impact of early somatosensory restriction.
It is reasonable to assume that anatomical changes should be manifested behaviorally. Suggestions for smaller, more restricted studies, that would be more effective in describing the behavioral impact of early manipulations of the environment, were outlined. === Arts, Faculty of === Psychology, Department of === Graduate
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