Subcortical connections of area V4 in the macaque

SUBCORTICAL CONNECTIONS OF AREA V4 IN THE MACAQUE^*

RICARDO GATTASS³, CLAUDIA DISTLER⁴, ROBERT DESIMONE²AND LESLIE G. UNGERLEIDER¹

¹

²Laboratory of Neuropsychology, National Institute of Mental Health, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland 20892 USA.

³Laboratory of Cognitive Physiology, Instituto de Biofisica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 21941-900 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil.

⁴Department of Zoology and Neurobiology, Ruhr University Bochum, D-44780 Bochum, Germany.

To determine the subcortical efferent and afferent connections o visual area V4, we injected tritiated amino acids, wheat germ agglutinin conjugated to horseradish peroxidase (WGA-HRP), and the retrograde fluorescent tracers, fast blue, diamidine yellow, and bisbenzimide under electrophysiological guidance into 20 sites in V4 in 10 hemispheres of 9 macaque monkeys. The injection sites included the representations raging from the fovea to far peripheral eccentricities in both the upper (4) and lower visual field (17). The results indicated that V4 receives afferent inputs from dorsal raphe, medial raphe, locus coeruleus, and the ventral tegmentum. V4 has bi-directional connections with the lateral basal nuclei of the amigdala, the pulvinar and the claustrum. It has bi-directional topographic projections with four different portions of the inferior and lateral pulvinar and two different portions of the claustrum. V4 projects to the superficial and intermediate layers of the superior colliculus, to the thalamic reticular nucleus, to the interlaminar portions of the lateral geniculate nuclei, the posterior portion of the putamen and virtually the entire caudate nuclei. The projections to the caudate nuclei occupy the dorsomedial portion of the head, the entire body, and posterior part of the tail of the nuclei. — ( June 27, 2000 )

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  05 Oct 2000
• Date of issue
  Sept 2000