Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis MO 63110, USA.
J Neurophysiol. 2010 Feb;103(2):817-26. doi: 10.1152/jn.00729.2009. Epub 2009 Dec 2.
Multisensory neurons tuned to both vestibular and visual motion (optic flow) signals are found in several cortical areas in the dorsal visual stream. Here we examine whether such convergence occurs subcortically in the macaque thalamus. We searched the ventral posterior nuclei, including the anterior pulvinar, as well as the ventro-lateral and ventral posterior lateral nuclei, areas that receive vestibular signals from brain stem and deep cerebellar nuclei. Approximately a quarter of cells responded to three-dimensional (3D) translational and/or rotational motion. More than half of the responsive cells were convergent, thus responded during both rotation and translation. The preferred axes of translation/rotation were distributed throughout 3D space. The majority of the neurons were excited, but some were inhibited, during rotation/translation in darkness. Only a couple of neurons were multisensory being tuned to both vestibular and optic flow stimuli. We conclude that multisensory vestibular/optic flow neurons, which are commonly found in cortical visual and visuomotor areas, are rare in the ventral posterior thalamus.
多感觉神经元对前庭和视觉运动（光流）信号都有反应，这些神经元存在于背侧视觉流的几个皮质区域中。在这里，我们研究了这种在猴脑丘脑下部是否会发生。我们搜索了腹后核，包括前丘，以及腹外侧和腹后外侧核，这些区域接收来自脑干和深小脑核的前庭信号。大约四分之一的细胞对三维（3D）平移和/或旋转运动有反应。超过一半的反应细胞是会聚的，因此在旋转和平移时都会反应。平移/旋转的首选轴分布在整个 3D 空间中。在黑暗中旋转/平移时，大多数神经元被兴奋，但有些被抑制。只有少数神经元是多感觉的，对前庭和光流刺激都有反应。我们的结论是，多感觉前庭/光流神经元通常存在于皮质视觉和视觉运动区域中，在腹后丘脑下部很少见。
