Structure and Function of the Third Geniculocortical Pathway in Primates.

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Our understanding of the human visual system has been based on the idea that there are two main nerve pathways from the eye to the brain. One, called the parvocellular pathway, is for colour and detail vision, and the other, called the magnocellular pathway, is for movement perception. Damage to either pathway by disease such as glaucoma, or a lesion such as stroke, will cause specific changes in visual perception and these changes can be used to diagnose the nature of the disease or lesion. We will study a recently recognised third subdivision of the visual pathway, called the koniocellular pathway. The properties of koniocellular cells have not previously been studied in anthropoid primates, and their importance for human vision is not well understood. We will study the way that koniocellular cells respond to moving and patterned stimuli, and their connections with the cerebral cortex, in order to determine whether this pathway could contribute to aspects of normal and abnormal visual perception. We will follow up our preliminary evidence that koniocellular cells respond to visual stimuli of the type used to diagnose the early stages of eye diseases such as glaucoma. The results will give us a better understanding of the way that the nervous system processes visual information, and will clarify the basis of disturbances to normal visual function.