My paper with @mikearcaro.bsky.social exploring the organization of pulvino-cortical connections in newborn human infants is now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social ! www.cell.com/current-biol... - ThreadSky

vayzenb.bsky.social • 51 days ago

My paper with @mikearcaro.bsky.social exploring the organization of pulvino-cortical connections in newborn human infants is now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social !

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(24)01583-5

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vayzenb.bsky.social•51 days ago

A long-standing hypothesis in developmental (neuro)science is that high-level perceptual abilities in neonates are supported by subcortical structures, such as the pulvinar, and that connectivity with the pulvinar even scaffolds the development of cortical areas

vayzenb.bsky.social•51 days ago

But how adult like is the pulvinar in neonates and to what extent is it already wired up with cortex?

We tested this question by examining the organization and maturity of *structural connections* between the pulvinar and areas of occipital, ventral, lateral, and dorsal visual cortices.

vayzenb.bsky.social•51 days ago

First, we found that the large-scale organization of pulvino-cortical connections was already in place at birth, such that the neonate pulvinar exhibited connections to each individual visual area.

vayzenb.bsky.social•51 days ago

Zooming into the pulvinar, we found that that each cortical area exhibited a distinct peak of connectivity.

Collectivity, visual areas showed gradients of connectivity in the pulvinar corresponding to the hierarchical organization of ventral, lateral, and dorsal visual pathways.

vayzenb.bsky.social•51 days ago

This structured connectivity was even found when splitting a single area, V1, into dorsal and ventral components, revealing distinct patterns of connectivity corresponding to each component

vayzenb.bsky.social•51 days ago

Remarkably, the pattern of connections with V1 was spatially correlated with *functional* retinotopic responses of the adult pulvinar.

That is, areas of the pulvinar most connected with dorsal V1 in neonates responded to stimuli in the lower-visual-field of adults (and vice versa for ventral V1)

nblauch.bsky.social•51 days ago

So cool Vlad. Thoughts on how we can integrate pulvinar functions into computational models?

vayzenb.bsky.social•51 days ago

I've definitely been thinking about this a lot, and I don't know that I have a good tweet-level answer yet. But, I think Randy O'Reilly's work modeling the pulvinar is a good starting point for this question

https://direct.mit.edu/jocn/article/33/6/1158/98116/Deep-Predictive-Learning-in-Neocortex-and-Pulvinar

nblauch.bsky.social•50 days ago

Good point. Been meaning to dig into that work for a while…

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