test
Search publications, data, projects and authors

Thesis

English

ID: <

10670/1.h45uj6

>

Where these data come from
Development and structure of cortical networks in the macaque

Abstract

The work performed during this thesis is three fold. In the first part, 12 injections of retrograde tracers were performed in cynomolgus macaques at different visual eccentricities in V1, V2, V4 and MT. We observe that, while injections performed in territories corresponding to the central (i.e. foveal) representation of the visual hemifield preferentially receive inputs from areas belonging to the ventral pathway, injections placed in peripheral representations preferentially labels neurons in areas known to be part of the dorsal pathway. Eccentric injections return an exponential decay of connexion strength with increasing distances, as previously described (Markov et al, 2014). This strongly argues in favour of the Exponential Distance Rule (EDR) being powerful enough to explain the formation of the functional streams of the visual cortex. Firstly, it strongly suggests that the EDR is applicable at any point of the cortical sheet regardless of area boundaries, and that therefore the cortex is better seen as a continuous sheet of gradually changing properties, instead of a mosaic of well-defined cortical areas. Secondly, it helps inform and refine our current definition of an area towards a more comprehensive one which includes topological location. Finally, it has deep implications regarding the evolution of cortical areas as well as the cortex as a whole. In the second part, a comparison was attempted between tractography and tract tracing, with the high definition diffusion MRI scan of one macaque brain. Tractography was computed on it, and the resulting connectivity matrix compared to tract tracing (Markov et al, 2014). The preliminary results obtained in this thesis fall in the same range of detection success than previous studies: between 70 and 77 % of the connectivity assessed by dMRI-based tractography is correct using the same Receiver Operating Charateristic (ROC) approach (Azadbakht et al 2015, Calabrese et al 2015a, Donahue et al 2016). It also highlights a problem of specificity of connexions detected by tractography. It fails to accurately discriminate empty connexions (i.e. absent) as empty, a problem especially salient in the context of early visual areas, the connectivity of which is known to be very specific (Tigges et al 1973, Tigges et al 1974, Martinez-Millan & Hollander 1975, Kaas & Lin 1977, Wong-Riley 1978). Overall, caution is for now warranted and connectivity properties should not at this point be inferred on diffusion MRI based tractography. In the last part, 6 injections were performed in 3 bilaterally enucleated animals (3 in the Default Extrastriate Cortex - DEC, 1 in V2 and 2 in V4) in order to assess how the visual connectivity is impacted by the loss of retinal inputs to the thalamus. As previously reported, abnormal gyri are observed on the operculum, whose territory is now dominated by the DEC, a hybrid cortex combining histological and histochemical feature of striate and exstrastiate cortex (Dehay et al 1996a, Dehay et al 1996b). Also, the LGN anatomy is massively perturbed, losing its heterogeneity of strictly defined layers for a homogeneous structure. Inputs from the pulvinar and the LGN were found to be unfocused, scattered and unsegregated in side-by-side injections. The pulvinar input to the DEC was found to be an order of magnitude higher than a normal pulvinar-to-V1 connexion, when the same comparison for the LGN was found to be an order of magnitude lower. These changes in connectivity appear to diminish in importance as one goes up the visual hierarchy. Indeed the most striking changes are in V1 (aberrant gyri, DEC, ventralisation, etc.) whereas V4 appears to be seemingly unperturbed by the absence of retinal inputs. Regarding the development of the visual system, this fact argues for a localised effect of the thalamic inputs (i.e. only V1 and V2) and an absence of domino-effect cascade that would perturb the entirety of the brain, despite the quite drastic enucleation process

Your Feedback

Please give us your feedback and help us make GoTriple better.
Fill in our satisfaction questionnaire and tell us what you like about GoTriple!