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Reduced density of geniculocortical terminals in foveal layer 4A in the macaque primary visual cortex: relationship to S-cone density

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Abstract

The S-cone system is closely linked to the perception of blue/yellow. The trichromatic system of Old-World monkeys and humans has relatively few S-cones in the fovea. In this study, we investigated the distribution of putative S-cone afferents in macaques primary visual cortex (V1) which form a characteristic honeycomb arrangement in layer 4A. It was hypothesized that if there were a low number of S-cone opponent projecting neurons in central vision then this would be seen as a reduction in afferents in foveal layer 4A. Recent studies have shown that the vesicular glutamate transporter 2 (VGlut2) is a marker for thalamic afferent terminals in cortex. The distribution of VGlut2-immunoreactive (-ir) terminals was studied in the foveal and perifoveal representation of V1. It was found that there was a substantial reduction in the terminal density in the foveal representation: the density was 5–6 times lower in the foveal V1 than in regions representing perifoveal eccentricities of 1°–2° and beyond. These findings may provide the cortical substrate of foveal tritanopia, the reduced blue perceptual ability for small fields in the center of gaze.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by NIH grants EY17945 and P30EY013079. V.G-M was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (National R&D&I Plan 2008–2011, National Human Resources Mobility Programme, Postdoctoral Mobility in Foreign Centers, grant EX2009-0636). We thank Jenna Kelly for helpful suggestions and Claudia Farb, Yasmeen Afzal, and Tunazzina Ahmed for their technical support.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Neural Science, New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, NY, 10003, USA

    Virginia Garcia-Marin, Marina Sundiang & Michael J. Hawken

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  1. Virginia Garcia-Marin
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  2. Marina Sundiang
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  3. Michael J. Hawken
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Correspondence to Michael J. Hawken.

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Supplementary Fig. 1: High magnification images from 4Cα and 4Cβ at the foveal and perifoveal representations. Note that there is no qualitative difference in the density of VGlut2-ir puncta in layer 4C at the foveal and perifoveal representations whereas layer 4A has a marked reduction of puncta density at the same foveal representation (Fig. 2). Scale bar: 20 µm.

Supplementary material 1 (TIFF 14297 kb)

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Garcia-Marin, V., Sundiang, M. & Hawken, M.J. Reduced density of geniculocortical terminals in foveal layer 4A in the macaque primary visual cortex: relationship to S-cone density. Brain Struct Funct 220, 2783–2796 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-014-0826-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-014-0826-5

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