Organization of association projections from area 17 to areas 18 and 19 and to suprasylvian areas in the cat's visual cortex

Abstract

Cells in area 17 that are labelled by single, discrete injections of retrogradely transported tracers into extrastriate visual areas are discontinuously distributed in dense patches. In this study we made multiple, closely spaced injections of fluorescent dyes into extrastriate areas, to generate large deposits that would reveal whether the distributions of corticocortical cell bodies in area 17 are truly patchy or appear clustered only after small injections. By injecting a different tracer into each extrastriate area, or group of areas, we examined the spatial relationships between the populations of association cells. All deposits of tracers in areas 18, 19, or suprasylvian cortex, irrespective of size, label cells in a series of clusters in topographically related parts of area 17. We conclude that the complete populations of cells in area 17 that project to areas 18, 19, and the lateral suprasylvian cortex are all genuinely distributed in a patchy fashion. There appears to be a complex relationship between the sets of association cells projecting to different extrastriate regions: they do not completely overlap, only partially, and share some cortical zones but not others. In these experiments, only tiny percentages (2-5%) of labelled cells in the overlapping regions were filled with both tracers, suggesting that very few association cells in area 17 project to more than one of the extrastriate areas we studied. By comparing the dimensions of each injection site and of the labelled region in area 17, we estimated the extent of the convergence from area 17 to areas 18, 19, and posteromedial suprasylvian areas in retinotopic terms. The functional convergence was very similar in these pathways.