Spatial and temporal visual properties of the neurons in the intermediate layers of the superior colliculus

Affective blindsight relies on low spatial frequencies

“…The primacy of LSF information in the subcortical pathway appear to derive from the predominance of magnocellular projections to the superior colliculus (e.g., Markus et al, 2009), which favours speed over detail. Indeed, the low spatial frequency components of fearful faces have been reported to produce more rapid responses than the high spatial frequency components (Vlamings, Goffaux, & Kemner, 2009).…”

Spatio-temporal visual properties in the ascending tectofugal system

“…The temporal frequency properties of the SCs, SCi, Sg and CN are also similar. The neurons responded optimally to high temporal frequencies displayed high temporal frequency cut-off values and narrow temporal frequency tuning [28][29][30][31]36,37]. These findings indicate that these neurons act as good spatio-temporal filters in the low spatial and high temporal frequency domain.…”

“…Furthermore the majority of the neurons showed band pass temporal frequency tuning with a clear optimal temporal frequency in the high temporal frequency domain. Temporal high-pass neurons were also found, but we recorded no temporal low-pass units in the SCs, SCi, Sg and the CN (for a more detailed description of the spatio-temporal properties of the SCs, SCi, Sg and the CN see our previous publications [28][29][30][31]). …”

“…The neurons of different structures of the ascending tectofugal system (i.e. in the SC, the Sg of the posterior thalamus, the visual associative cortex along the anterior ectosylvian cortex (AES cortex) and the caudate nucleus (CN) neurons) prefer low spatial and high temporal frequencies and display narrow spatial and temporal frequency tuning [19,[28][29][30][31].…”

Processing of dynamic visual information in the caudate nucleus

“…Recent anatomical and physiological studies suggest that CN neurons receive visual input through the ascending tectofugal system (Hoshino, et al, 2009;Nagy, et al, 2003;Nagy, et al, 2008). The classical visual receptive field properties of the CN neurons (Nagy, et al, 2003) and their sensitivity to visual stimuli of low spatial and high temporal frequency (Nagy, et al, 2008) frequecny (Nagy, et al, 2008) makes them very similar to the neurons in the ascending tectofugal system (Pinter & Harris, 1981;Paróczy, et al, 2006;Márkus, et al, 2009). The visually active neurons in the CN have extremely large visual receptive fields that consistently include the area centralis and cover almost the whole visual field of the contralateral eye (Pouderoux & Freton, 1979;Nagy, et al, 2003).…”