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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on February 16, 2009
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn229
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Thalamocortical Connections of Parietal Somatosensory Cortical Fields in Macaque Monkeys are Highly Divergent and Convergent

Jeffrey Padberg1, Christina Cerkevich2, James Engle1,3, Alexander T. Rajan1, Gregg Recanzone1,4, Jon Kaas2 and Leah Krubitzer1,3

1 Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA, 2 Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37201, USA, 3 Department of Psychology, 4 Department of Neurobiology, Physiology & Behavior, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95618, USA

Address correspondence to Leah Krubitzer, PhD, Center for Neuroscience, 1544 Newton Ct, Davis, CA 95618, USA. Email: lakrubitzer{at}ucdavis.edu.

We examined the organization and cortical projections of the somatosensory thalamus using multiunit microelectrode recording techniques in anesthetized monkeys combined with neuroanatomical tracings techniques and architectonic analysis. Different portions of the hand representation in area 3b were injected with different anatomical tracers in the same animal, or matched body part representations in parietal areas 3a, 3b, 1, 2, and areas 2 and 5 were injected with different anatomical tracers in the same animal to directly compare their thalamocortical connections. We found that the somatosensory thalamus is composed of several representations of cutaneous and deep receptors of the contralateral body. These nuclei include the ventral posterior nucleus, the ventral posterior superior nucleus, the ventral posterior inferior nucleus, and the ventral lateral nucleus. Each nucleus projects to several different cortical fields, and each cortical field receives projections from multiple thalamic nuclei. In contrast to other sensory systems, each of these somatosensory cortical fields is uniquely innervated by multiple thalamic nuclei. These data indicate that multiple inputs are processed simultaneously within and across several, "hierarchically connected" cortical fields.

Key Words: area 1 • area 2 • area 5 • posterior parietal cortex • topographic connections


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