Neuronal interactions in cat visual cortex mediated by the corpus callosum.

Abstract

The article summarizes three sets of physiological and anatomical studies carried out to investigate the structural basis of the functional interactions between visual cortical areas 17 and 18 in the two cerebral hemispheres of cats. (1) The visual field representations in the transcallosal sending and receiving zones are defined. (2) The consequences of severing callosal fibers on the visual field representation at the area 17/18 border are described. (3) Lastly, experiments using cooling to reversibly inactive transcallosal inputs are reported. The observations on the transcallosal sending and receiving zones show that callosal connections of area 17 are concerned with a vertical hour-glass shaped region of the visual field centered on the midline, and this region is doubly represented, once in each hemisphere. The zone represents azimuths within +/- 4 degrees of the midline at the 0 degree horizontal meridian, and azimuths out to +/- 15 to +/- 25 degrees at positions distant from the horizontal meridian. The observations suggest that, in addition to interactions between neurons concerned with positions immediately adjacent to the midline, there are positions, especially high and low in the visual field, where interactions can occur between neurons which have receptive fields displaced some distance from the midline. The extent of this double representation is reduced by approximately 2/3 when the corpus callosum is cut. The retention of some bilateral representation in these animals suggests that there are alternate routes for across-the-midline transmission of visual signals. Or, more likely, there are ganglion cells in temporal retina with crossed projections that make significant contributions to the remaining double representation of the visual field. Lastly, the results obtained using cooling inactivation of transcallosal fibers show that many excitatory and inhibitory circuits are under the direct control of transcallosal fibers in the normally functioning brain. These connections appear to be no different from intrinsic connections of area 17, and they undoubtedly contribute to the binding of the two half-field representations, one in each hemisphere, and perceptual unity across the midline.