期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：1992
卷号：89
期号：24
页码：11905-11909
DOI：10.1073/pnas.89.24.11905
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：The relationships between cytochrome oxidase blobs, ocular-dominance columns, and iso-orientation domains, subsystems underlying visual perception, were explored in primary visual cortex of macaque monkey. High-resolution maps of these three subsystems were acquired. Optical imaging based on activity-dependent intrinsic signals revealed that the most prominent organizational feature of orientation preference was a radial arrangement, forming a pinwheel-like structure surrounding a singularity point. More than 80% of these pinwheels were centered along the midline of ocular-dominance columns. The iso-orientation contours of adjacent pinwheels crossed borders of ocular-dominance columns at approximately right angles. Pinwheels with the same or opposite directions of orientation-preference change were smoothly connected with each other. On the average, all orientations were equally represented. In exactly the same cortical area, the cytochrome oxidase blobs, thought to be involved in color processing, were also mapped, using cytochrome oxidase histology. Like the centers of pinwheels, the centers of blobs also lie along the midline of ocular-dominance columns. However, the centers of pinwheels did not coincide with the centers of blobs; these two subsystems are spatially independent. "Hypercolumn" modules, each including two complete pinwheels in two adjacent columns of complementary ocularity, as well as portions of a few blobs, were frequently found but did not seem to be the primary unit of cortical organization. An alternative to hypercolumns is proposed.
