A mouse model for cerebral/cortical visual impairment (CVI) impairs vision and disrupts the spatial frequency tuning of neurons in visual cortex.

Cerebral/cortical visual impairment (CVI) is a visual disorder often associated with perinatal hypoxic injury. The pathophysiology of CVI is poorly understood in part because of the lack of an animal model. Here we developed a murine model of CVI from existing rodent early postnatal hypoxia models for periventricular leukomalacia. Exposure to hypoxia during the equivalent to the human third trimester did not perturb gross motor function but caused severe impairments in binocular depth perception and visual acuity measured with behavioral assays. Impaired vision was associated with normal retinal function assessed with electroretinograms, but reduced size of the visual thalamus, and aberrant tuning for spatial frequency by populations of excitatory neurons in primary visual cortex calculated from in vivo calcium imaging experiments. This murine model of CVI provides a framework for triangulating circuit deficits with the severity of visual impairment and testing potential therapeutic interventions.