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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on April 9, 2009
Cerebral Cortex 2009 19(12):2902-2915; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhp060
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Axon Morphologies and Convergence Patterns of Projections from Different Sensory-Specific Cortices of the Anterior Ectosylvian Sulcus onto Multisensory Neurons in the Cat Superior Colliculus

Veronica Fuentes-Santamaria, Juan C. Alvarado, John G. McHaffie and Barry E. Stein

Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, USA

Address correspondence to Dr Veronica Fuentes-Santamaria, Regional Center for Biomedical Research, Department of Medical Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain. Email: Veronica.Fuentes{at}uclm.es.

Corticofugal projections to the thalamus reveal 2 axonal morphologies, each associated with specific physiological attributes. These determine the functional characteristics of thalamic neurons. It is not clear, however, whether such features characterize the corticofugal projections that mediate multisensory integration in superior colliculus (SC) neurons. The cortico-collicular projections from cat anterior ectosylvian sulcus (AES) are derived from its visual, auditory, and somatosensory representations and are critical for multisensory integration. Following tracer injections into each subdivision, 2 types of cortico-collicular axons were observed. Most were categorized as type I and consisted of small-caliber axons traversing long distances without branching, bearing mainly small boutons. The less frequent type II had thicker axons, more complex branching patterns, larger boutons, and more complex terminal boutons. Following combinatorial injections of 2 different fluorescent tracers into defined AES subdivisions, fibers from each were seen converging onto individual SC neurons and indicate that such convergence, like that in the corticothalamic system, is mediated by 2 distinct morphological types of axon terminals. Nevertheless, and despite the conservation of axonal morphologies across different subcortical systems, it is not yet clear if the concomitant physiological attributes described in the thalamus are directly applicable to multisensory integration.

Key Words: auditory • cross-modal • drivers • modulators • multimodal • somatosensory • visual


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