Universality in the Evolution of Orientation Columns in the Visual Cortex

By M. Kaschube, M. Schnabel, S. Löwel, D. Coppola, Leonard E. White, F. Wolf. 2010

219 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Orientation Columns In the brain's visual cortex, certain neurons respond to vertical lines and others to horizontal lines, with a range in between. Such orientation of neurons tends to be organized in columns reflecting similar responses, and the columns are organized in pinwheels representing the range of responses. Kaschube et al. (p. 1113, published online 4 November; see the Perspective by Miller) looked at the organization of orientation columns in diverse placental mammals and discovered a similarity of organizational principles. Analysis of evolutionarily divergent species highlights constraint on brain structure imposed by self-organizing neural networks. The brain’s visual cortex processes information concerning form, pattern, and motion within functional maps that reflect the layout of neuronal circuits. We analyzed functional maps of orientation preference in the ferret, tree shrew, and galago—three species separated since the basal radiation of placental mammals more than 65 million years ago—and found a common organizing principle. A symmetry-based class of models for the self-organization of cortical networks predicts all essential features of the layout of these neuronal circuits, but only if suppressive long-range interactions dominate development. We show mathematically that orientation-selective long-range connectivity can mediate the required interactions. Our results suggest that self-organization has canalized the evolution of the neuronal circuitry underlying orientation preference maps into a single common design.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

1. Judith S. Law
2. C. Dovrolis
3. Jim Bednar
4. Ján Antolík
5. Jean-Luc Richard Stevens

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Zsolt Kira
2. Judith S. Law
3. C. Dovrolis
4. Jim Bednar
5. James Smith
6. Ján Antolík
7. Jean-Luc Richard Stevens

Citations in the corpus

• Mechanisms for Stable, Robust, and Adaptive Development of Orientation Maps in the Primary Visual Cortex (2013, methodology): “Orientation-selective neurons in carnivoran and primate primary visual cortex (V1) form systematic topographic maps organized by preferred retinal location and orientation (Blasdel, 1992a,b; Kaschube et al., 2010).”
• Unsupervised Continual Learning and Self-Taught Associative Memory Hierarchies (2019, background): “The design of STAMs is based on the following points about cortical columns: 1) The cerebral cortex consists of the same six-layer module, referred to as cortical column, repeated throughout the cortex with minor anatomical differences Kaschube et al. (2010); Kaas (2012); Reid (2012); Miller (2016).”