Métin C, Frost D O
Laboratoire des Neurosciences de la Vision, Université de Paris, France.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1989 Jan;86(1):357-61. doi: 10.1073/pnas.86.1.357.
These experiments investigate the capacity of thalamic and cortical structures in a sensory system to process information of a modality normally associated with another system. Retinal ganglion cells in newborn Syrian hamsters were made to project permanently to the main thalamic somatosensory (ventrobasal) nucleus. When the animals were adults, single unit recordings were made in the somatosensory cortices, the principal targets of the ventrobasal nucleus. The somatosensory neurons responded to visual stimulation of distinct receptive fields, and their response properties resembled, in several characteristic features, those of normal visual cortical neurons. In the visual cortex of normal animals and the somatosensory cortex of operated animals, the same functional categories of neurons occurred in similar proportions, and the neurons' selectivity for the orientation or direction of movement of visual stimuli was comparable. These results suggest that thalamic nuclei or cortical areas at corresponding levels in the visual and somatosensory pathways perform similar transformations on their inputs.
这些实验研究了感觉系统中丘脑和皮质结构处理通常与另一个系统相关的某种感觉信息的能力。使新生叙利亚仓鼠的视网膜神经节细胞永久性地投射到丘脑主要躯体感觉（腹侧基底）核。当动物成年后，在腹侧基底核的主要靶区——躯体感觉皮层进行单单位记录。躯体感觉神经元对不同感受野的视觉刺激产生反应，并且它们的反应特性在几个特征方面类似于正常视觉皮层神经元。在正常动物的视觉皮层和手术动物的躯体感觉皮层中，相同功能类别的神经元以相似的比例出现，并且神经元对视觉刺激的方向或运动方向的选择性是相当的。这些结果表明，视觉和躯体感觉通路中相应水平的丘脑核或皮质区域对其输入进行类似的转换。
