Anatomical properties and physiological correlates of the intrinsic connections in cat area 18.

After making a map of response properties of neurons in a roughly 3 X 4 mm region of area 18 in the cat, we injected wheat-germ agglutinin horseradish peroxidase (WGA-HRP) and succinylated concanavalin A (Con A) into physiologically identified regions of the map. We observed up to 10 patches of retrogradely labeled cells surrounding each injection site. The majority of the patches occurred within 1.4 mm of the center of the injection site, but rare patches were found as far as 3.4 mm from the injection site. The mean center-to-center spacing of the intrinsic patches was about 1 mm, while the mean distance between the center of the injection site and the nearest patches was less than 1 mm. The labeled cells included both nonpyramidal and pyramidal types and were found in all layers, although they were usually most dense in layers II-IV. Between 2% and 9% of the cells within a cortical column were labeled after a single injection of WGA-HRP or Con A into area 18. Injections of different tracers into 2 neighboring areas resulted in a uniform and less patchy distribution of labeled cells, which suggests that the patches observed after a single injection were only a portion of a continuous horizontal system of interconnections. The patterns and positions of the intrinsic patches were compared to the distribution of the following receptive-field properties: preferred orientation, receptive-field location, and eye preference. The preferred orientations of the recording sites within the injected and labeled areas were different and, most frequently, orthogonal to each other. This is a highly specific projection, since regions with orientation values like those of the injection site were "within range," yet not labeled. We were unable to detect any relationship between the ocular preferences of the injected and labeled cell regions. Injections into areas predominantly driven by the contralateral eye resulted in labeled regions exhibiting varied eye preference distributions. In some animals they were like the injection site and in others there were equal numbers of contra- and ipsilateral eye-dominated regions. The overall distribution of the patches around the injection site was elongated along the anterior-posterior cortical axis of the brain. The patches extended further in the posterior than the anterior direction. These observations appear to be related to the finding that the cortical magnification factor is greater along the anterior-posterior than the medial-lateral axis of area 18.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)