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Barbara Gordon-Lickey Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology B.A., 1963, Radcliffe College Ph.D., 1966, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research Interests Mechanisms underlying development of visual behavior; the role of transmitters and receptors in neuronal plasticity during visual development Email

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Dr. Gordon-Lickey is retired from teaching. She maintains an office in the Tublitz lab at the Institute.


We would like to know why the brains of young animals are more plastic than are the brains of adult animals. By more plastic we mean more responsive to the environment. The classic example of neural plasticity is Wiesel and Hubel's 1963 finding that closing one eye of a kitten prevents the visual cortex from responding to the deprived eye. Closing one eye of an adult cat does not have this effect. We are studying the role of glutamate receptors in plasticity. We are particularly interested in the type of glutamate receptor known as the NMDA receptor, because this receptor has been implicated in long term potentiation, a frequently used model of synaptic plasticity. Using both homogenate binding and receptor autoradiography, we have shown that the binding of NMDA receptor ligands to the visual cortex increases from infancy to the time of maximum visual cortex plasticity and then decreases. NMDA receptors are made up of several subunits. Using immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization, we are now investigating the possibility that some of the age dependent changes in these receptors result from changes in subunit composition. We are using patch clamp physiology along with immunohistochemistry to find out whether the function of the receptors changes with their subunit composition.



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Representative Publications

• Cao, Z., Liu, L., Lickey, M., and Gordon, B. (2000) Development of NR1, NR2A and NR2B mRNA in NR1 immunoreactive cells of rat visual cortex. Brain Res. 868(2):296-305.

• Cao, Z., Lickey, M.E., Liu, L., Kirk, E., and Gordon, B. (2000) Postnatal development of NR1, NR2A and NR2B immunoreactivity in the visual cortex of the rat. Brain Res. 859(1):26-37.

• Guire, E.S., Lickey, M.E., and Gordon, B. (1999) Critical period for the monocular deprivation effect in rats: assessment with sweep visually evoked potentials. J. Neurophysiol. 81(1):121-128.

• Gordon, B., G. Kinch, N. Kato, C. Keele, T. Lissman and L.N. Fu. (1997) The development of MK- 801, kainate, AMPA, and muscimol binding sites and the effect of dark rearing in rat visual cortex. J. Comp. Neurol. 383: 73-81.

• Gordon, B., Pardo, D., and Conant, K. (1996) The laminar distribution of MK-801, kainate, AMPA, and muscimol binding sites in cat visual cortex: A developmental study. J. Comp. Neurol. 365: 466-478.

• Gordon, B., Tseng, Y.L., Jaeger, R. Petrovic, A and Tovar, K. (1995) The development of MK- 801, kainate, AMPA, and muscimol binding sites in cat visual cortex. Vis. Neurosci. 12:241-252.

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