PSD-95 drives binocular vision maturation critical for predation

Postsynaptic density protein 95 (PSD-95) is a signalling scaffold within the postsynaptic density of excitatory synapses which drives silent synapse maturation during critical periods (CP). Binocularity develops during visual CPs and matures before its closure. Despite lifelong critical period plasticity, PSD-95 knock-out (KO) mice exhibit relatively subtle sensory phenotypes as adult mice in standard cage housing. To assess PSD-95’s role in ethologically relevant binocular visual processing, we compared prey capture behaviour in PSD-95 KO and wild-type (WT) mice. KO mice were profoundly impaired in diverse epochs of predatory behaviour, but exhibited improved prey localisation under monocular conditions, indicating impaired binocular integration. This was confirmed in an orientation discrimination task, where KO mice were impaired binocularly but performed monocularly like WT mice. Our results depict a critical role of PSD-95 to drive binocular maturation which becomes evident under ethologically demanding behaviours.

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