Structure and Function of the Third Geniculocortical Pathway in Primates.

我们对人类视觉系统的理解一直基于这样一个观点，即从眼睛到大脑有两条主要的神经通路。一种称为小细胞通路，用于颜色和细节视觉，另一种称为大细胞通路，用于运动感知。青光眼等疾病或中风等疾病对这两种途径的损害都会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细分，称为角质细胞通路。在类人型灵长类动物中，以前还没有研究过角质细胞的特性，而且它们对人类视觉的重要性也没有被很好地理解。我们将研究非角质细胞对运动和图案刺激的反应方式，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视觉感知的各个方面。我们将跟进我们的初步证据，即角质形成细胞对用于诊断青光眼等眼部疾病早期阶段的视觉刺激类型有反应。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.