Intracortical Connections Underlying Cortical Function

视觉信息由视神经传递到一个名为外侧膝状核(LGN)的主要中枢，然后投射到大脑皮层的两个主要区域，即第17区和第18区。当视觉通路中的单个细胞对视觉刺激做出反应时，该刺激被称为该细胞的“感受野”。过去的发现表明，视觉皮质中的一些细胞只对特定位置的刺激做出反应，并具有特定的属性(如直线的方向或特定方向的运动)，这可能是相当复杂的。研究发现，皮层细胞以柱状方式组织，其中列内的细胞对首选的视觉刺激具有敏感度。这项研究将检查17区的皮质连接，这些连接在柱子之间水平延伸。细胞染料标记、放射自显影和光学记录的新方法将被用于可视化连接的解剖。一种新开发的分离皮质切片的生理记录将揭示这些水平连接如何在突触水平上发挥作用。总之，这些研究将阐明动物视觉世界大范围内的视觉信息是如何整合到视觉皮质中的。这一新方法的结果将对视觉科学非常重要，并可能对神经科学和信息处理研究的其他领域产生影响。

Visual information is carried by the optic nerves to a major center called the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), which in turn projects to two major areas of the cortex of the brain, called Areas 17 and 18. When a single cell in the visual pathway responds to a visual stimulus, that stimulus is said to be in the cell's "receptive field." Past discoveries have shown that some cells in the visual cortex only respond to stimuli in particular locations and having particular properties (such as orientation of a line, or movement in a certain direction), which may be quite complex. Cortical cells were discovered to be organized in a columnar fashion, where cells within a column share sensitivity to a preferred visual stimulus. This study will examine the cortical connections in Area 17 that extend horizontally, among the columns. Cellular dye labels, autoradiography, and the new methods of optical recording will be used to visualize the anatomy of the connections. Physiological recordings in a newly developed preparation of an isolated slice of cortex will reveal how these horizontal connections function at the synaptic level. Together these studies will clarify how visual information over a wide region of the animal's visual world are integrated in the visual cortex. The results of this novel approach will be very important for visual science, and may have impact on other areas of neuroscience and information processing studies.