hide
Free keywords:
-
Abstract:
Recent reports of the lack of periodic orientation columns in a
very large rodent species, the red-rumped agouti, and the
existence of incompressible hypercolumns in the lineage of
primates, as demonstrated in one of the smallest primates, the
mouse lemur, strengthen the interpretation that salt-and-
pepper and columns-and-pinwheel mosaics are two distinct
functional layouts. These layouts do neither depend on lifestyle
nor scale with body size, brain size, absolute neuron numbers,
binocular overlap, or visual acuity, but are primarily distin-
guishable by phylogenetic traits. The predictive value of other
biological signatures such as V1 neuronal surface density and
the central-peripheral density ratio of retinal ganglion cells are
reconsidered, and experiments elucidating the intracortical
connectivity in rodents are proposed.
