The retinotopic organization of lateral suprasylvian visual areas in the cat

Abstract

This is the second in a series of papers in which we describe our continuing efforts to define functional units of visual cortex based upon electro-physiological mapping of single and multiple unit activity in both awake and the nitrous oxide anesthetized cats. In the first paper (Tusa, Palmer and Rosenquist, '78), the extent and retinotopic organization of area 17 were described. In this paper, we describe the somewhat more complex organization of the visual cortex lying on the banks of the middle and posterior suprasylvian sulci. This region of cortex consists of six retinotopically organized units. These areas are arranged as three roughly mirror symmetrical pairs separated in each case by the fundus of the middle or posterior suprasylvian sulci. Some thalamo-cortical autoradiographic material is presented which supports this parcellation of the cortex.

Subthreshold auditory inputs to extrastriate visual neurons are responsive to parametric changes in stimulus quality: Sensory-specific versus non-specific coding

“…Collectively, the present results and their implications indicate that subthreshold auditory influences observed in visual PLLS neurons are sensory in nature and undoubtedly contribute to the role of the retinotopically-organized region (Palmer et al, 1978) in visual motion processing (Rauschecker et al, 1987). These observations are also consistent with the receptive field-based sensory processing that occurs in bimodal multisensory neurons.…”

“…A total of 4 recording penetrations traversed the lateral bank of the lateral suprasylvian sulcus that contains PLLS, as confirmed by reconstruction of the recording tracks (shown in Figure 1) and correlation with reported receptive field progressions across the region (Palmer et al, 1978). Similar to our previous findings in this area (Allman and Meredith, 2007), qualitative sensory testing revealed unimodal auditory neurons near the lip of the PLLS sulcus (presumably in Area DZ; Stecker et al, 2005), unimodal visual neurons deeper within the bank toward the fundus, and bimodal (auditory-visual) neurons wedged between the two groups.…”

Analysis of Retinotopic Maps in Extrastriate Cortex

“…derived by quantitatively interpolating and contouring the data from an individual case. For example, the extensive mapping studies of Rosenquist (Tusa et al, 1978, 1979;Palmer et al, 1978;Tusa and Palmer, 1980) present a considerable amount of the raw mapping data (electrode penetration tracks illustrated on sections with correspondingly numbered receptive field charts) along with summary double contour maps. It would be interesting to see quantitatively interpolated, double contour maps for individual cases showing the location of the data points.…”

A neurochemical signature of visual recovery after extrastriate cortical damage in the adult cat

“…In the visual system, most studies reporting training-induced recovery of function were conducted following damage to extrastriate visual cortex-lesions of the lateral suprasylvian (LS) visual cortex in cats, e.g. (Rudolph and Pasternak, 1996 Pasternak, 2004) or lesions in areas MT/MST of monkeys (Newsome and Pare, 1988;Rudolph and Pasternak, 1999).The feline LS cortex is a complex of extrastriate visual areas (Palmer et al, 1978;Sherk, 1986b;Grant and Shipp, 1991;Sherk and Mulligan, 1993) that exhibit functional similarity with areas MT/MST of primates (Payne, 1993), playing an important role in the processing of complex visual motion information (Rauschecker, 1988;Rudolph and Pasternak, 1996;Akase et al, 1998). LS cortex is relatively high level in the hierarchy of the cat visual system (Scannell et al, 1995).…”

“…Furthermore, training-induced recovery after LS lesions is always restricted to retrained visual field locations (Huxlin and Pasternak, 2004). The tighter retinotopic organization of early visual cortical areas (relative to higher level visual cortical areas: Palmer et al, 1978;Tusa et al, 1981;Sherk and Mulligan, 1993) suggests that recovery might be mediated by early levels of the visual cortical system. Area 18, a relatively low-level area in the cat visual cortical hierarchy, might be an ideal candidate to mediate training-induced recovery after LS lesions because of its strong interconnections with LS cortex.…”