*4.3. Tissue Preparation*

For histochemistry purposes, the animals were anesthetized with xylazine and ketamine mixture and transcardially perfused, first with phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) and then prefixed with 4% paraformaldehyde in PBS. Their brains were dissected and post-fixed for 20–22 h in the same fixative solution at room temperature and then embedded in paraffin. Brain sections were cut to 3 μm thickness. For the analyses of the OTs, coronal sections ranging from bregma +1.18 to −2.30 [85] were used. To detect changes in the LGN, we analyzed coronal sections cut at approximately −2.46 from bregma, and the SC nuclei were investigated at around −3.52 from bregma [85].
