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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access first published online on May 14, 2009
This version published online on May 23, 2009
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhp096
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© 2009 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cortical Connections to Area TE in Monkey: Hybrid Modular and Distributed Organization

Elena Borra1,2, Noritaka Ichinohe2, Takayuki Sato3, Manabu Tanifuji3 and Kathleen S. Rockland2

1 Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Sezione di Fisiologia, Università di Parma; Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT, Unità di Parma), I43100 Parma, Italy, 2 Laboratory for Cortical Organization and Systematics, Brain Science Institute, RIKEN, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan, 3 Laboratory for Integrative Neural Systems, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan

Address correspondence to Elena Borra, PhD, Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Sezione di Fisiologia, Università di Parma, Via Volturno 39, I-43100 Parma, Italy. Email: elena.borra{at}nemo.unipr.it.

To investigate the fine anatomical organization of cortical inputs to visual association area TE, 2–3 small injections of retrograde tracers were made in macaque monkeys. Injections were made as a terminal procedure, after optical imaging and electrophysiological recording, and targeted to patches physiologically identified as object-selective. Retrogradely labeled neurons occurred in several unimodal visual areas, the superior temporal sulcus, intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and prefrontal cortex (PFC), consistent with previous studies. Despite the small injection size (<0.5 mm wide), the projection foci in visual areas, but not in IPS or PFC, were spatially widespread (4–6 mm in extent), and predominantly consisted of neurons labeled by only one of the injections. This can be seen as a quasi-modular organization. In addition, within each projection focus, there were scattered neurons projecting to one of the other injections, together with some double-labeled (DL) neurons, in a more distributed pattern. Finally, projection foci included smaller "hotspots," consisting of intermixed neurons, single-labeled by the different injections, and DL neurons. DL neurons are likely the result of axons having extended, spatially separated terminal arbors, as demonstrated by anterograde experiments. These results suggest a complex, hybrid connectivity architecture, with both modular and distributed components.

Key Words: branched collaterals • double-labeled neurons • modularity • object recognition • optical imaging


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