Journal of Neuroscience, Vol 8, 435-444, Copyright © 1988 by Society for Neuroscience
The roles of specificity and competition in the formation of a laminated colliculogeniculate projection
JK Sutton and JK Brunso-Bechtold
Department of Anatomy, Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27103.
In the present study, we examined the colliculogeniculate projection in
normal adult tree shrews and in adults that were bilaterally enucleated at
birth. We injected lectin-conjugated HRP into superficial superior
colliculus and then mapped the pattern of anterogradely transported enzyme
in the ipsilateral dLGN. In normal adult tree shrews, the results confirm
that the colliculogeniculate projection is laminated and terminates
predominantly in small-celled layers 3 and 6 and in the interlaminar space
between layers 4 and 5 (Fitzpatrick et al., 1980); we report an additional
sparse projection to layer 4. In bilaterally enucleated animals, the
colliculogeniculate projection is unlaminated and tends to terminate in the
lateral two-thirds of the dLGN even though synaptic sites are vacated
throughout the nucleus. We suggest that this preference may be due to a
specificity of the colliculogeniculate fibers for the lateral two-thirds of
the dLGN, which, in normal adult tree shrews, contains cells with similar
physiological characteristics. We further suggest that the normal
lamination of the colliculogeniculate projection in the lateral two- thirds
of the dLGN may be due to competition with retinogeniculate fibers so that
colliculogeniculate fibers terminate predominantly in layers containing
small, W-like cells.