What chiefly distinguishes cerebral cortex from other parts of the central nervous system is the great diversity of its cell types and interconnexions. It would be astonishing if such a structure did not profoundly modify the response patterns of fibres coming into it. In the cat's visual cortex, the receptive field arrangements of single cells suggest that there is indeed a degree of complexity far exceeding anything yet seen at lower levels in the visual system. In a previous paper we described receptive fields of single cortical cells, observing responses to spots of light shone on one or both retinas (Hubel & Wiesel, 1959). In the present work this method is used to examine receptive fields of a more complex type (Part I) and to make additional observations on binocular interaction (Part II). This approach is necessary in order to understand the behaviour of individual cells, but it fails to deal with the problem of the relationship of one cell to its neighbours. In the past, the technique of recording evoked slow waves has been used with great success in studies of functional anatomy. It was employed by Talbot & Marshall (1941) and by Thompson, Woolsey & Talbot (1950) for mapping out the visual cortex in the rabbit, cat, and monkey. Daniel & Whitteiidge (1959) have recently extended this work in the primate. Most of our present knowledge of retinotopic projections, binocular overlap, and the second visual area is based on these investigations. Yet the method of evoked potentials is valuable mainly for detecting behaviour common to large populations of neighbouring cells; it cannot differentiate functionally between areas of cortex smaller than about 1 mm2. To overcome this difficulty a method has in recent years been developed for studying cells separately or in small groups during long micro-electrode penetrations through nervous tissue. Responses are correlated with cell location by reconstructing the electrode tracks from histological material. These techniques have been applied to

Receptive fields, binocular interaction and functional architecture in the cat's visual cortex

Neuronal growth cones navigate over long distances along specific pathways to find their correct targets. The mechanisms and molecules that direct this pathfinding are the topics of this review. Growth cones appear to be guided by at least four different mechanisms: contact attraction, chemoattraction, contact repulsion, and chemorepulsion. Evidence is accumulating that these mechanisms act simultaneously and in a coordinated manner to direct pathfinding and that they are mediated by mechanistically and evolutionarily conserved ligand-receptor systems.

The Molecular Biology of Axon Guidance

Of the many possible functions of the macaque monkey primary visual cortex (striate cortex, area 17) two are now fairly well understood. First, the incoming information from the lateral geniculate bodies is rearranged so that most cells in the striate cortex respond to specifically oriented line segments, and, second, information originating from the two eyes converges upon single cells. The rearrangement and convergence do not take place immediately, however: in layer IVc, where the bulk of the afferents terminate, virtually all cells have fields with circular symmetry and are strictly monocular, driven from the left eye or from the right, but not both; at subsequent stages, in layers above and below IVc, most cells show orientation specificity, and about half are binocular. In a binocular cell the receptive fields in the two eyes are on corresponding regions in the two retinas and are identical in structure, but one eye is usually more effective than the other in influencing the cell; all shades of ocular dominance are seen. These two functions are strongly reflected in the architecture of the cortex, in that cells with common physiological properties are grouped together in vertically organized systems of columns. In an ocular dominance column all cells respond preferentially to the same eye. By four independent anatomical methods it has been shown that these columns have the from of vertically disposed alternating left-eye and right-eye slabs, which in horizontal section form alternating stripes about 400 $\mu $m thick, with occasional bifurcations and blind endings. Cells of like orientation specificity are known from physiological recordings to be similarly grouped in much narrower vertical sheeet-like aggregations, stacked in orderly sequences so that on traversing the cortex tangentially one normally encounters a succession of small shifts in orientation, clockwise or counterclockwise; a 1 mm traverse is usually accompanied by one or several full rotations through 180 degrees, broken at times by reversals in direction of rotation and occasionally by large abrupt shifts. A full complement of columns, of either type, left-plus-right eye or a complete 180 degrees sequence, is termed a hypercolumn. Columns (and hence hypercolumns) have roughly the same width throughout the binocular part of the cortex. The two independent systems of hypercolumns are engrafted upon the well known topographic representation of the visual field. The receptive fields mapped in a vertical penetration through cortex show a scatter in position roughly equal to the average size of the fields themselves, and the area thus covered, the aggregate receptive field, increases with distance from the fovea. A parallel increase is seen in reciprocal magnification (the number of degrees of visual field corresponding to 1 mm of cortex). Over most or all of the striate cortex a movement of 1-2 mm, traversing several hypercolumns, is accompanied by a movement through the visual field about equal in size to the local aggregate receptive field. Thus any 1-2 mm block of cortex contains roughly the machinery needed to subserve an aggregate receptive field. In the cortex the fall-off in detail with which the visual field is analysed, as one moves out from the foveal area, is accompanied not by a reduction in thickness of layers, as is found in the retina, but by a reduction in the area of cortex (and hence the number of columnar units) devoted to a given amount of visual field: unlike the retina, the striate cortex is virtually uniform morphologically but varies in magnification. In most respects the above description fits the newborn monkey just as well as the adult, suggesting that area 17 is largely genetically programmed. The ocular dominance columns, however, are not fully developed at birth, since the geniculate terminals belonging to one eye occupy layer IVc throughout its length, segregating out into separate columns only after about the first 6 weeks, whether or not the animal has visual experience. If one eye is sutured closed during this early period the columns belonging to that eye become shrunken and their companions correspondingly expanded. This would seem to be at least in part the result of interference with normal maturation, though sprouting and retraction of axon terminals are not excluded.

Ferrier Lecture: Functional Architecture of Macaque Monkey Visual Cortex

Ultrafine particles (UFP, particles <100 nm) are ubiquitous in ambient urban and indoor air from multiple sources and may contribute to adverse respiratory and cardiovascular effects of particulate...

/pdf/translocation-of-inhaled-ultrafine-particles-to-the-brain-ag24k66xh6.pdf

Translocation of Inhaled Ultrafine Particles to the Brain

Degeneration and regeneration of the nervous system

Intracellular transport in neurons.

Mechanism of spreading cortical depression

(a) After injection of labeled leucine into the eye of goldfish, radioactive protein rapidly accumulates in the contralateral optic tectum in the layer containing the synaptic endings of the optic fibers. This material reaches the tectum 6-12 hr after the isotope injection, a fact which indicates that the rate of transport is at least 40 mm per day. (b) This rapidly transported material has been shown to consist exclusively of protein, in which the label remains attached to leucine. (c) Inhibition of protein synthesis in the retina prevents the appearance of the transported protein in the tectum, but inhibition of protein synthesis in the tectum does not. Substances having some of the same properties as leucine, such as cycloleucine and norepinephrine, are not transported to the tectum. These experiments all indicate that the transported protein is synthesized in the retina. However, inhibition of retinal protein synthesis after this protein has been formed does not interfere with the transport mechanism itself. (d) The fast component consists of about 85% particulate material. It may be distinguished from a slowly moving component, transported at 0.4 mm per day, which contains about 5 times as much radioactivity as the fast component, and which consists of 60% particulate matter and 40% soluble protein.

https://rupress.org/jcb/article-pdf/38/3/494/1068517/494.pdf

Bernice Grafstein

Papers

Intracellular transport in neurons.

Mechanism of spreading cortical depression

Fast and slow components in axonal transport of protein

The nerve cell body response to axotomy.

Axonal regeneration in the rat sciatic nerve: effect of a conditioning lesion and of dbcAMP.