The “Use It or Lose It” Dogma in the Retina: Visual Stimulation Promotes Protection Against Retinal Ischemia

Abstract

Enriched environment (EE) protects the retina from adult rats against ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury; however, how the components of EE contribute to the recovery after retinal ischemic damage remains unclear. We analyzed the contribution of social, cognitive, and visual stimulation on functional and histological alterations induced by I/R. Male Wistar rats were submitted to unilateral ischemia by increasing intraocular pressure to 120 mmHg for 40 min. After ischemia, animals were housed in the following conditions: standard environment (SE), enriched environment (EE), novelty environment (NE), standard social environment (SoE), standard visual environment (SVE), or visual environment (VE). In another set of experiments, rats were submitted to bilateral ischemia and housed in SE or EE. At 2 weeks post-ischemia, rats were subjected to electroretinography and histological analysis. EE (but not SoE or NE) afforded functional and histological protection against unilateral ischemia. EE did not induce protection in animals submitted to bilateral ischemia. VE protected retinal function and histology and increased retinal BDNF levels, while a TrkB receptor antagonist prevented the protective effect of VE against I/R damage. In animals submitted to unilateral ischemia, EE and VE induced an increase in c-fos immunoreactivity in the ipsi and contralateral superior colliculus, whereas in animals submitted to bilateral ischemia, no changes in c-fos-immunoreactivity were observed in either superior colliculus from EE-housed animals. These results support that visual stimulation could be a potent stimulus for driving retinal protection in adult rats through a BDNF/TrkB-dependent mechanism, likely involving the superior colliculus.