Stream-related preferences of inputs to the superior colliculus from areas of dorsal and ventral streams of mouse visual cortex

Previous studies of intracortical connections in mouse visual cortex have revealed two subnetworks that resemble the dorsal and ventral streams in primates. Although calcium imaging studies have shown that many areas of the ventral stream have high spatial acuity whereas areas of the dorsal stream are highly sensitive for transient visual stimuli, there are some functional inconsistencies that challenge a simple grouping into ‘what/perception’ and ‘where/action’ streams known in primates. The superior colliculus (SC) is a major center for processing of multimodal sensory information and the motor control of orienting the eyes, head and body. Visual processing is performed in superficial layers, whereas premotor activity is generated in deep layers of the SC. As the SC is known to receive input from visual cortex, we asked whether the projections from 10 visual areas of the dorsal and ventral streams terminate in differential depth profiles within the SC. We found that inputs from primary visual cortex (V1) are by far the strongest. Projections from the ventral stream were substantially weaker, whereas the sparsest input originated from areas of the dorsal stream. Importantly, we found that ventral stream inputs terminated in superficial layers, whereas dorsal stream inputs tended to be patchy and either projected equally to superficial and deep layers or strongly preferred deep layers. The results suggest that the anatomically defined ventral and dorsal streams contain areas which belong to distinct functional systems, specialized for the processing of visual information and visually guided action, respectively

Analysis of finite-sized electromagnetic bandgap materials and devices by scattering matrix method

Master'sMASTER OF ENGINEERIN

Gateways of ventral and dorsal streams in mouse visual cortex

It is widely held that the spatial processing functions underlying rodent navigation are similar to those encoding human episodic memory (Doeller et al, 2010). Spatial and nonspatial information are provided by all senses including vision. It has been suggested that visual inputs are fed to the navigational network in cortex and hippocampus through dorsal and ventral intracortical streams (Whitlock et al, 2008), but this has not been shown directly in rodents. We have used cyto- and chemoarchitectonic markers, topographic mapping of receptive fields and pathway tracing to determine in mouse visual cortex whether the lateromedial (LM) and the anterolateral fields (AL), which are the principal targets of primary visual cortex (V1) (Wang and Burkhalter, 2007) specialized for processing nonspatial and spatial visual information (Gao et al, 2006), are distinct areas with diverse connections. We have found that the LM/AL border coincides with a change in type 2 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor (m2AChR) expression in layer 4 and with the representation of the lower visual field periphery. Our quantitative analyses further show that LM strongly projects to temporal cortex as well as the lateral entorhinal cortex, which has weak spatial selectivity (Hargreaves et al, 2005). In contrast, AL has stronger connections with posterior parietal cortex, motor cortex and the spatially selective medial entorhinal cortex (Haftig et al, 2005). These results support the notion that LM and AL are architecturally, topographically and connectionally distinct areas of extrastriate visual cortex and that they are gateways for ventral and dorsal streams

Multiple Distinct Subtypes of GABAergic Neurons in Mouse Visual Cortex Identified by Triple Immunostaining

The majority of cortical interneurons use GABA (gamma amino butyric acid) as inhibitory neurotransmitter. GABAergic neurons are morphologically, connectionally, electrically and chemically heterogeneous. In rat cerebral cortex three distinct groups of GABAergic interneurons have been identified by the expression of parvalbumin (PV), calretinin (CR) and somatostatin (SOM). Recent studies in mouse cerebral cortex have revealed a different organization in which the CR and SOM populations are partially overlapping. Because CR and SOM neurons derive from different progenitors located in different embryonic structures, the coexpression of CR + SOM suggests that the chemical differentiation of interneurons is regulated postmitotically. Here, we have taken an important first step towards understanding this process by triple immunostaining mouse visual cortex with a panel of antibodies, which has been used extensively for classifying developing interneurons. We have found at least 13 distinct groups of GABAergic neurons which include PV, CR, SOM, CCK (cholecystokinin), CR + SOM, CR + NPY (neuropeptide Y), CR + VIP (vasointestinal polypeptide), SOM + NPY, SOM + VIP, VIP + ChAT (choline acetyltransferase), CCK + NPY, CR + SOM + NPY and CR + SOM + VIP expressing cells. Triple immunostaining with PV, CR and SOM antibodies during postnatal development further showed that PV is never colocalized with CR and SOM. Importantly, expression of SOM and CR + SOM developed after the percentage of CR cells that do not express SOM has reached the mature level, suggesting that the chemical differentiation of SOM and CR + SOM neurons is a postnatal event, which may be controlled by transcriptional regulation

Network analysis of corticocortical connections reveals ventral and dorsal processing streams in mouse visual cortex

Much of the information used for visual perception and visually guided actions is processed in complex networks of connections within the cortex. To understand how this works in the normal brain and to determine the impact of disease, mice are promising models. In primate visual cortex, information is processed in a dorsal stream specialized for visuospatial processing and guided action and a ventral stream for object recognition. Here, we traced the outputs of 10 visual areas and used quantitative graph analytic tools of modern network science to determine, from the projection strengths in 39 cortical targets, the community structure of the network. We found a high density of the cortical graph that exceeded that previously shown in monkey. Each source area showed a unique distribution of projection weights across its targets (i.e. connectivity profile) that was well-fit by a lognormal function. Importantly, the community structure was strongly dependent on the location of the source area: outputs from medial/anterior extrastriate areas were more strongly linked to parietal, motor and limbic cortex, whereas lateral extrastriate areas were preferentially connected to temporal and parahippocampal cortex. These two subnetworks resemble dorsal and ventral cortical streams in primates, demonstrating that the basic layout of cortical networks is conserved across species

Dynamical Behavior of Nonautonomous Stochastic Reaction-Diffusion Neural Network Models

This brief investigates nonautonomous stochastic reaction-diffusion neural-network models with S-type distributed delays. First, the existence and uniqueness of mild solution are studied under the Lipschitz condition without the linear growth condition. Due to the existence of a nonautonomous reaction-diffusion term and the infinite dimensional Wiener process, the criteria for the well-posedness of the models are established based on the evolution system theory. Then, the S-type distributed delay, which is an infinite delay, is handled by the truncation method, and sufficient conditions for the global exponential stability are obtained by constructing a simple Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional candidate. Finally, neural-network examples and an illustrative example are given to show the applications of the obtained results.</p

Cyclooxygenase 2 Modulates Killing of Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes by Colon Cancer Cells

Although anti-cancer effects of cyclooxygenase 2 (COX2) inhibitors have been reported, most studies focused on the direct effects of COX2 inhibiters on colon cancer cells. On the other hand, several types of cancers express Fas ligand (FasL) and/or TRAIL and mediate apoptosis of T cells in vitro. The “counter-attack” machinery may account for the mechanisms by which tumors evade host immune surveillance. In this study we determined if COX2 inhibitor could modulate effector molecules of cell death on colon cancer cells changing their effects on cytotoxic T lymphocytes. Colon adenocarcinoma cells, HCA7 and HCT116, the former COX2-positive and the latter COX2-negative, were pre-incubated with/without a COX2 inhibitor, NS398. Subsequently, the cells were co-cultured with Jurkat T cell leukemia cells and damage to Jurkat cells was determined. Treatment with NS398 resulted in reduction of expression of FasL and TRAIL in HCA7 cells, whereas NS398 did not affect the expression of FasL and TRAIL in HCT116 cells. The number of viable Jurkat cells was diminished when cells were co-cultured with naive, non-pretreated HCA7 or HCA116 cells. Preincubation of HCA7 cells with NS398 before co-culture blunted the HCA7 cell-induced cell toxicity on Jurkat cells. In contrast, pretreatment with NS398 failed to inhibit the HCT116-induced Jurkat cell killing. Our results suggest that COX2 regulates the expression of FasL and TRAIL on COX2-positive colon cancer cells thereby evoking a counter-attack against cytotoxic T cells, which may lead to compromised host immune responses

A Novel Short-Range Prediction Model for Railway Track Irregularity

In recent years, with axle loads, train loads, transport volume, and travel speed constantly increasing and railway network steadily lengthening, shortcomings of current maintenance strategies are getting to be noticed from an economical and safety perspective. To overcome the shortcomings, permanent-of-way departments throughout the world have given a considerable attention to an ideal maintenance strategy which is to carry out appropriate maintenances just in time on track locations really requiring maintenance. This strategy is simplified as the condition-based maintenance (CBM) which has attracted attentions of engineers of many industries in the recent 70 years. To implement CBM for track irregularity, there are many issues which need to be addressed. One of them focuses on predicting track irregularity of each day in a future short period. In this paper, based on track irregularity evolution characteristics, a Short-Range Prediction Model was developed to this aim and is abbreviated to TI-SRPM. Performance analysis results for TI-SRPM illustrate that track irregularity amplitude predictions on sampling points by TI-SRPM are very close to their measurements by Track Geometry Car