Visual responses in the dorsolateral frontal cortex of marmoset monkeys

Abstract

Behavior and cognition in humans and other primates rely on networks of brain areas guided by the frontal cortex. The marmoset offers exciting new opportunities to study links between brain physiology and behavior, but the functions of frontal cortex areas are still being identified in this species. Here, we provide the first evidence of visual receptive fields in the marmoset dorsolateral frontal cortex, an important step toward future studies of visual cognitive behavior.

Marmosets: a promising model for probing the neural mechanisms underlying complex visual networks such as the frontal–parietal network

“…Similar visual responses can be found in marmosets, particularly in areas 8aV, 8C and 6DR (Fig. 2C, D; (Feizpour et al 2021)). In macaques, the lateral portion of FEF receives afferents from more foveal representations of visual cortex, while the medial portion receives afferents from peripheral representations of visual cortex (Schall et al 1995).…”

“…The same is true for area 8aV in marmosets (Reser et al 2013). Consistent with this, in marmosets, the central visual field was better represented by the lateral aspect of area 8aV and the peripheral visual field was better represented by the medial aspect of area 8aV (Feizpour et al 2021).…”

“…C Example marmoset MRI reconstruction of array recording locations aligned to cytoarchitectural boundaries and D , Electrode map showing location of visual responses according to cytoarchitectural area. Adapted from (Feizpour et al 2021 ). M, medial; R, rostral …”

Functional organization of frontoparietal cortex in the marmoset investigated with awake resting-state fMRI

“…Taken together with our previous finding that functional connectivity reflects the strength of monosynaptic pathways (Hori et al 2020b), frontoparietal organization based on functional connectivity seems to be strongly linked to its anatomical connections. While invasive tracing techniques and ex-vivo cytoarchitecture studies are the gold standard for understanding the organization of the marmoset brain (Abe et al 2018;Burman et al 2006Burman et al , 2014Burman et al , 2015Lin et al 2019;Majka et al 2016Majka et al , 2021Reser et al 2013Reser et al , 2017Rosa et al 2009), functional connectivity measures based on resting-state fMRI allow rapid large-scale comparative mapping of the brain organization across species including humans (Vijayakumar et al 2019).…”

“…While frontoparietal networks have been extensively studied in macaque monkeys, little is known about their organization in the New World common marmoset monkey (Callithrix jacchus) which is now widely recognized as a powerful nonhuman primate experimental animal that may be able to bridge the gap between humans and preclinical rodent models. The marmoset may be an ideal primate model for studying frontoparietal networks, because -unlike in the macaque monkey -the marmoset's lissencephalic (smooth) cortex allows array and laminar electrophysiological recordings (Feizpour et al 2021;Ghahremani et al 2019;Johnston et al 2019;Ma et al 2020;Selvanayagam et al 2019) and calcium imaging (Ebina et al 2018;Kondo et al 2018;Wakabayashi et al 2018;Yamada et al 2016) in all dorsal frontoparietal areas.…”