Retinogeniculate Terminals Research Articles

A study of normal and congenitally abnormal retinogeniculate projections in cats.

AbstractRetinogeniculate terminations have been studied by fiber degeneration and microelectrode mapping methods in normal cats and in Siamese cats in which the retinogeniculate pathway is congenitally abnormal. The normal representation of the visual field, including the monocular temporal crescent, has been determined. It has also been shown that there is a cellular discontinuity in lamina A which corresponds to the blind spot or optic disc. In normal cats four geniculate layers receive retinogeniculate terminals; two layers (A and C) receive contralateral and two layers (A1 and C1) receive ipsilateral afferents.In Siamese cats laminae A and C are normal. Lamina A1 is broken up into four main cell segments. Two of these receive a normal input from the ipsilateral temporal hemiretina; two receive an abnormal projection from the contralateral temporal hemiretina. The abnormal projection originates primarily from a vertical strip of retina about 20°–25° in width that lies just temporal to the area centralis. Within this abnormal projection a normal retinotopic sequence is maintained but, since this projection goes to the contralateral instead of the ipsilateral lamina A1, the abnormal segments of lamina A1 receive a mirror‐image of the normal representation.Lamina C1 and the medial interlaminar nucleus receive an abnormal contralateral input from the temporal hemiretina similar to that found in lamina A1.

Observations on synaptic patterns in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus of the cat: the C laminae and the perikaryal synapses.

The laminae near the optic tract which have previously been described as C, C1 and C2, have been studied electron microscopically and compared ] to the A laminae. In the A laminae most of the presumed retinogeniculate axons end in encapsulated synaptic zones that contain multiple interconnected synaptic profiles. Only a few of these axons form simple axodendritic synapses upon proximal dendritic segments of the largest cells. In the C laminae the situation is reversed. Most of the retinogeniculate axons end as simple synapses upon medium or small dendrites and few end in encapsulated synaptic zones. Further, these zones are simpler in the C laminae than in the A laminae. The neuronal profiles are smallest and the synaptic interconnections appear to be least complex in lamina C2, where there are only a few, small, presumed retinogeniculate terminals. Of the three C laminae, lamina C, furthest from the optic tract, shows the largest profiles and the most complex interconnections. Bundles of very fine axons occur in all the laminae, but they dominate the regions closest to the optic tract (lamina C2) where they tend to run parallel to the lamina. Some of the largest cells in laminae A, A1 and C are contacted by very fine perisomatic axons which contain round vesicles. These axons have not been described before and are likely to represent an input too fine to have been demonstrable by light microscopical methods.