A theory of cortical map formation in the visual brain

Sohrab Najafian, Erin Koch, Kai Lun Teh, Jianzhong Jin, Hamed Rahimi-Nasrabadi, Qasim Zaidi, Jens Kremkow and Jose-Manuel Alonso ()
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Sohrab Najafian: SUNY College of Optometry
Erin Koch: SUNY College of Optometry
Kai Lun Teh: Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Jianzhong Jin: SUNY College of Optometry
Hamed Rahimi-Nasrabadi: SUNY College of Optometry
Qasim Zaidi: SUNY College of Optometry
Jens Kremkow: Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Jose-Manuel Alonso: SUNY College of Optometry

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: Abstract The cerebral cortex receives multiple afferents from the thalamus that segregate by stimulus modality forming cortical maps for each sense. In vision, the primary visual cortex maps the multiple dimensions of the visual stimulus in patterns that vary across species for reasons unknown. Here we introduce a general theory of cortical map formation, which proposes that map diversity emerges from species variations in the thalamic afferent density sampling sensory space. In the theory, increasing afferent sampling density enlarges the cortical domains representing the same visual point, allowing the segregation of afferents and cortical targets by multiple stimulus dimensions. We illustrate the theory with an afferent-density model that accurately replicates the maps of different species through afferent segregation followed by thalamocortical convergence pruned by visual experience. Because thalamocortical pathways use similar mechanisms for axon segregation and pruning, the theory may extend to other sensory areas of the mammalian brain.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29433-y

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