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nar is the largest extrageniculate thalamic visual nucleus in mammals. It establishes reciprocal connections with virtually all visual cortexes and likely plays a role in transthalamic cortico-cortical communication. In cats, the lateral posterior nucleus (LP) of the LP-pulvinar complex can be subdivided in two subregions, the lateral (LPl) and medial (LPm) parts, which receive a predominant input from the striate cortex and the superior colliculus, respectively. Here, we revisit the receptive field structure of LPl and LPm cells in anesthetized cats by determining their first-order spatiotemporal profiles through reverse correlation analysis following sparse noise stimulation. Our data reveal the existence of previously unidentified receptive field profiles in the LP nucleus both in space and time domains. While some cells responded to only one stimulus polarity, the majority of neurons had receptive fields comprised of bright and dark responsive subfields. For these neurons, dark subfields' size was larger than that of bright subfields. A variety of receptive field spatial organization types were identified, ranging from totally overlapped to segregated bright and dark subfields. In the time domain, a large spectrum of activity overlap was found, from cells with temporally coinciding subfield activity to neurons with distinct, time-dissociated subfield peak activity windows. We also found LP neurons with space-time inseparable receptive fields and neurons with multiple activity periods. Finally, a substantial degree of homology was found between LPl and LPm first-order receptive field spatiotemporal profiles, suggesting a high integration of cortical and subcortical inputs within the LP-pulvinar complex.cortico-thalamo-cortical pathways; electrophysiology; reverse correlation; thalamus; visual system THE PULVINAR NUCLEUS REPRESENTS the main extrageniculate thalamic visual structure in higher-order mammals and is likely to be involved in various aspects of the visual function such as higher-order motion analysis and visual attention (Casanova 2004). In the cat, the lateral posterior (LP) nucleus-pulvinar complex can be subdivided in at least three different nuclei based on its afferent connectivity and its cyto-and chemoarchitecture: the lateral and medial part of the LP (LPl and LPm) and the pulvinar nucleus (Berson and Graybiel 1983;Graybiel and Berson 1980). In addition to inputs from the retina (Boire et al. 2004) and the superior colliculus (Caldwell and Mize 1981), these nuclei receive prominent inputs from virtually all visual cortical areas (Berson and Graybiel 1983;Scannell et al. 1999;Updyke 1977). Because these connections are reciprocal, cortico-thalamo-cortical pathways through the LP-pulvinar thalamic complex provide a complementary route for corticocortical information flow. The cortical input appears to dominate those coming from the retina and the superior colliculus since a majority of LP neurons exhibit "cortical-like" properties such as direction and orientation selectivity, binocularity (in...

SLC4A11 is a H+/NH3/water transport protein, of corneal endothelial cells. SLC4A11 mutations cause congenital hereditary endothelial dystrophy and some cases of Fuchs endothelial corneal dystrophy. To probe SLC4A11’s roles, we compared gene expression in RNA from corneas of 17-week-old slc4a11−/− (n = 3) and slc4a11+/+ mice (n = 3) and subjected to RNA sequencing. mRNA levels for a subset of genes were also assessed by quantitative real-time reverse transcription PCR (qRT RT-PCR). Cornea expressed 13,173 genes, which were rank-ordered for their abundance. In slc4a11−/− corneas, 100 genes had significantly altered expression. Abundant slc14a1 expression, encoding the urea transporter UT-A, suggests a significant role in the cornea. The set of genes with altered expression was subjected to Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analyses, revealing that alterations clustered into extracellular region, cytoskeleton, cell adhesion and plasma membrane functions. Gene expression changes further clustered into classes (with decreasing numbers of genes): cell fate and development, extracellular matrix and cell adhesion, cytoskeleton, ion homeostasis and energy metabolism. Together these gene changes confirm earlier suggestions of a role of SLC4A11 in ion homeostasis, energy metabolism, cell adhesion, and reveal an unrecognized SLC4A11 role in cytoskeletal organization.