Effect of acute and chronic alcohol consumption and withdrawal on rat visual evoked potentials: focus on ON/OFF responses

Perception of stimulus onset and offset or stimulus duration is one of the fundamental functions in temporal information processing. Studies show that processing of stimulus onset and offset could be based on different neuronal mechanisms and, correspondingly, could be differently modulated by biologically active compounds. Alcohol is one of the most used and abusive drugs in the world. Alcohol consumption is related to various disorders and modulation of visual information processing at different levels in the visual system. Changes in the information processing chain of responses to stimulus onset and offset might cause the changes in perception of stimulus parameters and alter the reaction time. Our studies demonstrated that at the level of neuronal population the activation of the visual system during the visual stimulus onset is qualitatively different from that during the offset. The differences between these responses are noticeable at the cortical level in anesthetized and awake animals. Long-term alcohol consumption and abstinence had a strong long-term and, in some cases, irreversible impact on the visual information processing. Both of these conditions modulated only the last stage of stimulus onset processing at the level of visual cortex, but not at the level of lateral geniculate nucleus. Response to the stimulus offset was more susceptible to the effect of alcohol consumption and/or abstinence and was modulated at both visual cortex and lateral geniculate nucleus levels