Widespread corticostriate projections from temporal cortex of the rhesus monkey

Abstract

The corticostriate projections of temporal areas TA, TE, TF, TG, 35, and 28 were studied in the rhesus monkey with the use of autoradiography. Widespread projections were observed to rostral as well as caudal parts of the striatum for all areas except area 28. For example, areas TA and TG have sizable projections to the medial or periventricular part of the head of the caudate nucleus, as well as to the medial part of the tail of this structure and the dorsally adjacent putamen. Areas TE and TF also were observed to send strong projections to the head of the caudate nucleus. In addition, they project to the rostral putamen. Both have projections to the tail of the caudate nucleus and caudal putamen. The widespread distribution of temporostriate axons to the rostral striatum suggests strongly that previous silver impregnation studied have not only underestimated the strength of the temporal cortical contribution to the corticostriate system, but also failed to identify the major projection zone of temporostriate axon terminals. For example, while all temporal cortical areas contribute projections to an organized topography in the tail of the caudate nucleus and the ventrocaudal putamen, they were observed consistently to have larger projections to the head of the caudate nucleus and rostral putamen. These results add to a growing body of evidence which demonstrates the existence of widespread nonmotor cortical input to the basal ganglia, and an organization of this input far greater in complexity than that demonstrated by earlier suppressive silver impregnation methods.

Cortical and striatal neurone number in Huntington's disease

“…These retrograde phenomena could explain nerve cell loss in frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal association cortices. At variance with previous conclusions that favoured a restricted topographical pattern of corticostriatal projections [68], recent investigations demonstrated a widespread longitudinal termination of frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal lobe pyramidal neurone efferents in the caudate nucleus [36,42,43,65,72,78,94,103,111,118,127]. On the other hand, the primary visual area of monkeys has few, if any, direct connections with the caudate nucleus and ventral putamen [103].…”

Stimulus modality interacts with category structure in perceptual category learning

“…With visual stimuli, the procedural-learning system is mediated largely within the tail of the caudate nucleus. High-level visual areas, such as the inferotemporal cortex, project directly to the tail of the caudate nucleus, with about 10,000 visual cortical synapses converging onto each medium spiny cell in the caudate (Van Hoesen, Yeterian, & Lavizzo-Mourey, 1981;Webster, Bachevalier, & Ungerleider, 1993;Wilson, 1995). These medium spiny cells then project to the prefrontal and premotor cortex (via the globus pallidus and thalamus; see, e.g., Alexander, DeLong, & Strick, 1986).…”

“…COVIS assumes that efferent cortical projections from the visual cortex to the tail of the caudate nucleus (Van Hoesen et al, 1981;Webster et al, 1993;Wilson, 1995) onward to the prefrontal and premotor cortex via the globus pallidus and thalamus (Alexander et al, 1986) form the basis of procedural category learning of visual stimuli.…”

Dissociation Between the Effects of Damage to Perirhinal Cortex and Area TE

“…Second, because humans with damage to the perirhinal cortex demonstrate normal visual perception as evidenced by intact visual recognition performance with very short delays (Buffalo et al 1998a), whereas area TE has been proposed to play a role in visual perceptual processing (Iwai and Mishkin 1968;Gross 1973;Dean 1976;Buffalo et al 1998b), we reasoned that the two areas might differ in their contributions to visual short-term memory and visual long-term memory. Third, the perirhinal cortex receives direct input from visual areas upstream from area TE (Suzuki and Amaral 1994a), and area TE does not project exclusively to the perirhinal cortex but also originates direct prefrontal and parietal cortical projections as well as subcortical projections to the caudate nucleus (Van Hoesen et al 1981;Saint-Cyr et al 1990;Webster et al 1994). Accordingly, we reasoned that it might be possible to demonstrate a dissociation between the effects of lesions of the perirhinal cortex and area TE on two tasks that involved different kinds of visual discrimination.…”