中文摘要：

对人类和动物的心理学研究证实,老年个体的视觉对比敏感度相对青年个体显著下降。为揭示其可能的神经机制,采用在体细胞外单细胞记录技术研究青、老年猫（Felis catus）初级视皮层（primary visual cortex,V1）细胞对不同视觉刺激对比度的调谐反应。结果显示,老年猫V1细胞对视觉刺激反应的平均对比敏感度比青年猫显著下降,这与灵长类报道的研究结果相一致,表明衰老影响视皮层细胞对视觉刺激反应的对比敏感度是灵长类和非灵长类哺乳动物中普遍存在的现象,并可能是介导老年性视觉对比敏感度下降的神经基础。另外,与青年猫相比,老年猫初级视皮层细胞对视觉刺激的反应性显著增强,信噪比下降,感受野显著增大,表明衰老导致的初级视皮层细胞对视觉刺激反应的对比敏感度下降伴随着皮层内抑制性作用减弱。

英文摘要：

Psychophysical experiments on human and animal subjects have proven that aged individuals show significantly reduced visual contrast sensitivity compared with young adults.To uncover the possible neural mechanisms,we used extracellular single-unit recording techniques to examine the response of V1（primary visual cortex） neurons as a function of visual stimulus contrast in both old and young adult cats（Felis catus）.The mean contrast sensitivity of V1 neurons to visual stimuli in old cats decreased significantly relative to young adult cats,consistent with findings reported in old primates.These results indicate that aging can affect contrast sensitivity of visual cortical cells in both primate and non-primate mammalian animals,and might contribute to the reduction of perceptual visual contrast sensitivity in aged individuals.Further,V1 cells of old cats exhibited increased responsiveness,decreased signal-to-noise ratio,and enlarged receptive field（RF） size compared with that of young adult cats,which indicated that decreased contrast sensitivity of V1 neurons accompanied a reduction of intracortical inhibition during senescence.