Chapter 19: Influence of areas 17, 18, and 19 on receptive-field properties of neurons in the cat's posteromedial lateral suprasylvian visual cortex

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the influence of areas 17, 18, and 19 on receptive-field properties of neurons in the cat's posteromedial lateral suprasylvian visual cortex. Besides extrastriate areas 18 and 19, ten extrastriate visual cortical areas are identified on the basis of pathway tracing and electrophysiological mapping studies. The posteromedial lateral suprasylvian (PMLS) visual area is the large and best studied of these extrastriate visual cortical areas. One of the features of PMLS cortex that makes it extremely useful for understanding how visual information is integrated in the brain is that it is the target of several parallel visual pathways. A second pathway to PMLS cortex arises from the superior colliculus and passes through the thalamus to PMLS cortex. The thalamic nuclei involved in this pathway are the lateral posterior nucleus (LP), the posterior nucleus of Rioch (PN), and the C layers of the dorsal lateral geniculate body (dLGB). Temporal frequency sensitivity of responses to the optimal spatial frequency also has been tested for many PMLS cells.