Abstract
Researchers demonstrated an elegant ability for red discrimination in zebra finches. It is interested to understand whether red activates exhibit much stronger response than other colors in neural network levels. To reveal the question, local field potentials (LFPs) was recorded and analyzed in two visual pathways, the thalamofugal and the tectofugal pathways, of zebra finches. Human studies demonstrate visual associated telencephalons communicate with higher order brain areas such as prefrontal cortex. The present study determined whether a comparable transmission occurs in zebra finches. Telencephalic regions of the thalamofugal (the visual Wulst) and the tectofugal pathway (the entopallium) with their higher order telencephalon, nidopallium caudolateral (NCL) were simultaneously recorded. LFPs of relay nuclei (the nucleus rotundus, ROT) of tectofugal pathway were also acquired. We demonstrated that LFP powers in the tectofugal pathway were higher than those in the thalamofugal pathway when illuminating blue lights. In addition, the LFP synchronization was stronger between the entopallium and NCL. LFPs also revealed a higher Granger causality from the direction of entopallium to NCL and from ROT to entopallium. These results suggest that zebra finches’ tectofugal pathway predominately processing color information from ROT to NCL, relayed by entopallium, and blue could trigger the strongest response.
Highlights
Researchers demonstrated an elegant ability for red discrimination in zebra finches
The signal from geniculatis lateralis pars dorsalis (GLd) transmits to the visual Wulst (VW), a telencephalic region that is comparable with mammalian visual cortex[22]
Because the tectofugal pathway possesses the ability in color information[4,9], we hypothesized that telencephalons of visual pathway communicate with higher order brain areas in zebra finches and ENTO has stronger communication with nidopallium caudolateral (NCL) than VW, which is similar to humans[29,30,31], when stimulated by colors
Summary
Researchers demonstrated an elegant ability for red discrimination in zebra finches. It is interested to understand whether red activates exhibit much stronger response than other colors in neural network levels. We elucidated what kinds of color spectra trigger the largest brain responses in aforementioned visual pathways For this purpose, we implanted electrodes into the nuclei (ROT, ENTO and VW) relayed in the tectofugal and thalamofugal pathways in the left hemisphere, shined a series of colors to the right eye, and acquired the LFPs from these nuclei. Because the tectofugal pathway possesses the ability in color information[4,9], we hypothesized that telencephalons of visual pathway communicate with higher order brain areas in zebra finches and ENTO has stronger communication with NCL than VW, which is similar to humans[29,30,31], when stimulated by colors. We hypothesized that zebra finches are more sensitive to red because of the mate-selection[3,12,13,14], but blue and green may be important for the navigation purpose[16]
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