Area TEO and "Area?": cytoarchitectonic confusion corrected by connectivity and cortical ablation.

Abstract

Throughout history, researchers who examine the structure and function of the brain debate one another about how cortical areas are defined, as well as how these areas should be named. Different pieces of empirical evidence are used to define brain areas and it is important to preserve the accurate history of this evidence and the timeline of studies that lead to areal definitions that are either still used today or have been modified. As such, this paper traces the early history of a brain area located at the junction between the occipital and temporal lobes of the macaque known as TEO. This historical analysis leads to four main findings. First, even though Bonin and Bailey are credited with the definition of area TEO in 1947, they did not have the cytoarchitectonic evidence to support the distinction of TEO from adjacent areas. Second, the first evidence definitively separating area TEO from TE was actually based on connectivity as identified with strychnine neuronography by Petr et al. in 1949. Third, causal evidence from ablation studies conducted by Iwai and Mishkin (Experimental Neurology 25(4):585-594, 1969) supported this distinction by showing that TEO and TE were functionally distinct from one another. Fourth, researchers in the 1970s began referring to TEO as posterior inferotemporal (PIT) and TE as anterior inferotemporal (AIT), which is an important historical clarification as the PIT/AIT nomenclature is presently attributed to studies conducted more than a decade later. Altogether, this paper aims to preserve the historical origin of area TEO, as well as the empirical evidence that was used to originally differentiate this cortical expanse from surrounding areas.