Before the onset of sensory transduction, developing neural circuits spontaneously generate
correlated activity in distinct spatial and temporal patterns. During this period of patterned …

Highlights•Retinal waves drive visual circuits before the onset of visual experience.•Map
development in the midbrain, thalamus and cortex is regulated by retinal …

Spontaneous activity refines neural connectivity prior to the onset of sensory experience, but
it remains unclear how such activity instructs axonal connectivity with subcellular precision …

In mice, retinal direction selectivity is organized in a map that aligns to the body and
gravitational axes of optic flow, and little is known about how this map develops. We find …

Binocular competition is thought to drive eye-specific segregation in the developing visual
system, potentially through Hebbian synaptic learning rules that are sensitive to correlations …

The development of functional topography in the developing brain follows a progression
from initially coarse to more precisely organized maps. To examine the emergence of …

It is well established that spontaneous activity in the developing mammalian brain plays a
fundamental role in setting up the precise connectivity found in mature sensory circuits …

Neural circuit development is an activity-dependent process. This activity can be
spontaneous, such as the retinal waves that course across the mammalian embryonic retina …

Glutamatergic retinal waves, the spontaneous patterned neural activities propagating
among developing retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), instruct the activity-dependent refinement …

Spontaneous activity patterns propagate through many parts of the developing nervous
system and shape the wiring of emerging circuits. Prior to vision, waves of activity originating …