Department of Cognitive Sciences, School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine, California, USA.
Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, California, USA.
J Comp Neurol. 2021 Jan;529(1):129-140. doi: 10.1002/cne.24937. Epub 2020 Jun 1.
The extrageniculate visual pathway, which carries visual information from the retina through the superficial layers of the superior colliculus and the pulvinar, is poorly understood. The pulvinar is thought to modulate information flow between cortical areas, and has been implicated in cognitive tasks like directing visually guided actions. In order to better understand the underlying circuitry, we performed retrograde injections of modified rabies virus in the visual cortex and pulvinar of the Long-Evans rat. We found a relatively small population of cells projecting to primary visual cortex (V1), compared to a much larger population projecting to higher visual cortex. Reciprocal corticothalamic projections showed a similar result, implying that pulvinar does not play as big a role in directly modulating rodent V1 activity as previously thought.
外膝体视觉通路将视网膜的视觉信息从视上丘的浅层传递到丘脑枕,这一通路目前还知之甚少。人们认为丘脑枕可以调节皮质区之间的信息流,并且与视觉引导动作等认知任务有关。为了更好地了解其潜在的回路,我们在长爪沙鼠的视皮层和丘脑枕中注射了改良的狂犬病毒。与投射到高级视皮层的大量神经元相比,我们发现投射到初级视皮层(V1)的细胞数量相对较少。皮层-丘脑投射也得到了类似的结果,这意味着与之前的观点相反,丘脑枕在直接调节啮齿动物 V1 活动方面的作用可能并没有那么大。