Distinctive spatial and laminar organization of single axons from lateral pulvinar in the macaque

Abstract

Pulvino-cortical (PC) projections are a major source of extrinsic input to early visual areas in the macaque. From bulk injections of anterograde tracers, these are known to terminate in layer 1 of V1 and densely in the middle cortical layers of extrastriate areas. Finer, single axon analysis, as reviewed here for projections from the lateral pulvinar (PL) in two macaque monkeys (n = 25 axons), demonstrates that PL axons have multiple arbors in V2 and V4, and that these are spatially separate and offset in different layers. In contrast, feedforward cortical axons, another major source of extrinsic input to extrastriate areas, are less spatially divergent and more typically terminate in layer 4. Functional implications are briefly discussed, including comparisons with the better investigated rodent brain.