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Gating and control of primary visual cortex by pulvinar

Nature Neuroscience volume 15, pages 905–912 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

The primary visual cortex (V1) receives its driving input from the eyes via the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of the thalamus. The lateral pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus also projects to V1, but this input is not well understood. We manipulated lateral pulvinar neural activity in prosimian primates and assessed the effect on supra-granular layers of V1 that project to higher visual cortex. Reversibly inactivating lateral pulvinar prevented supra-granular V1 neurons from responding to visual stimulation. Reversible, focal excitation of lateral pulvinar receptive fields increased the visual responses in coincident V1 receptive fields fourfold and shifted partially overlapping V1 receptive fields toward the center of excitation. V1 responses to regions surrounding the excited lateral pulvinar receptive fields were suppressed. LGN responses were unaffected by these lateral pulvinar manipulations. Excitation of lateral pulvinar after LGN lesion activated supra-granular layer V1 neurons. Thus, lateral pulvinar is able to powerfully control and gate information outflow from V1.

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Figure 1: Reversibly inactivating lateral pulvinar almost abolishes visual responses in supra-granular layers of V1.
Figure 2: Gating of V1 output in the presence of LGN input.
Figure 3: The process of lateral pulvinar injection does not compromise the integrity of V1 measurements.
Figure 4: Exciting lateral pulvinar neurons responsive to a region boosts responses of V1 neurons to this region and suppresses responses to surrounding region.
Figure 5: Kindling of V1 activity by lateral pulvinar excitation after LGN lesion.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Mavity-Hudson for histology, S. Walston, Y. Jiang, D. Yampolsky, J. Mavity-Hudson, J. Patel and D. Rinker for help with experiments, D. Yampolsky for technical and computational assistance, and M. Feurtado for veterinary assistance. We thank F. Ebner, J. Kaas, R. Khumbani, J. Schall, P. Wallisch and K.-W. Yao for their suggestions and comments on the work. This work was supported by US National Institutes of Health grants R01-EY01778, P30-EY008126, T32-EY07135 and P30-HD15052.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

    Gopathy Purushothaman & Vivien A Casagrande

  2. Neuroscience Graduate Program, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

    Roan Marion

  3. Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

    Keji Li & Vivien A Casagrande

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  1. Gopathy Purushothaman
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Contributions

G.P. and V.A.C. designed the experiments. G.P., R.M., K.L. and V.A.C. performed the experiments. G.P. analyzed the data and wrote the paper. G.P., R.M., K.L. and V.A.C. edited the manuscript. V.A.C. supervised the work.

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Correspondence to Gopathy Purushothaman or Vivien A Casagrande.

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Purushothaman, G., Marion, R., Li, K. et al. Gating and control of primary visual cortex by pulvinar. Nat Neurosci 15, 905–912 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3106

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