Structure and Function of the Third Geniculocortical Pathway in Primates.

我们对人类视觉系统的理解是基于这样一种想法，即从眼睛到大脑有两条主要的神经通路。一个称为小细胞通路，用于颜色和细节视觉，另一个称为大细胞通路，用于运动感知。疾病（如青光眼）或病变（如中风）对任一通路的损害将导致视觉感知的特定变化，这些变化可用于诊断疾病或病变的性质。我们将研究最近认识到的视觉通路的第三个分支，称为koniocellular通路。以前没有在灵长类动物中研究过koniocellular细胞的特性，它们对人类视觉的重要性也没有很好的理解。我们将研究Koniocellular细胞对移动和模式刺激的反应方式，以及它们与大脑皮层的联系，以确定这一途径是否有助于正常和异常的视觉感知。我们将跟踪我们的初步证据，即Koniocellular细胞对用于诊断早期眼部疾病（如青光眼）的视觉刺激的反应。这些结果将使我们更好地了解神经系统处理视觉信息的方式，并将澄清正常视觉功能障碍的基础。

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.