Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to R M Camarda.
A 33-year-old woman three weeks after a febrile illness presented with a syndrome of ophthalmoplegia, ataxia and areflexia (SOAA) that characterizes clinically both Bickerstaff and Miller Fisher syndromes. The normality of the electrophysiological tests performed, the CSF findings and the magnetic resonance images proved that the syndrome stemmed from brainstem pathology.
The mesial agranular frontal cortex that lies rostral to area 4 (F1) is formed by two distinct cytoarchitectonic areas: F3, located caudally, and F6, located rostrally. In the present experiments we investigated the organization of F3 and F6 by observing the motor responses evoked by their intracortical electrical microstimulation. Our main purpose was to find out whether the cytoarchitectonic subdivision of the mesial agranular frontal cortex into two areas has a physiological counterpart. The result showed that F3 (the caudal area) contains a complete motor representation with hindlimb movements located caudally, forelimb movements located centrally, and orofacial movements located rostrally. The great majority of limb movements involved proximal joints. With respect to F1, F3 showed the following functional characteristics: (1) lack of segregation between proximal and distal movements, (2) larger percentage of complex movements, and (3) higher excitability threshold. Movements were more difficult to elicit from F6 (the rostral area) than from F3. However, by using a longer stimulus train duration (100 ms) 39.3% of tested sites produced body movements. This percentage increased (50.5%) when the electrical stimulation was applied during monkey natural movements instead of when the monkey was still in its chair. Most of the evoked movements concerned the forelimb. More rarely, neck and upper face movements were observed. Unlike F1 and F3 where most movements were fast, slow movements were frequently observed with stimulation of F6. Many of them mimicked natural movements of the animal. Eye movements were evoked from F7 (superior area 6) but not from F6. An additional motor representation was found in the dorsocaudal part of area 24 (24d). This area is topographically organized with a forelimb representation located caudally and ventrally and a hindlimb representation located rostrally and dorsally. The excitability threshold of area 24d is higher than that of F1 and F3. Evoked movements were occasionally observed also after stimulation of area 24c. In conclusion, on the mesial cortical wall rostral to F1, there are at least three independent motor representations. On the basis of somatotopic organization and excitability properties, we propose that the term supplementary motor area (SMA-proper) should be reserved to F3.
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Single neurons were recorded from the rostral part of the agranular frontal cortex (area 6a beta) in awake, partially restrained macaque monkeys. In the medialmost and mesial sectors of this area, rostral to the supplementary motor area, neurons were found which were activated during arm reaching-grasping movements. These neurons ("reaching-grasping neurons") did not appear to be influenced by how the objects were grasped nor, with some exceptions, by where they were located. Their activity changed largely prior to the arm movement and continued until the end of it. The premovement modulation (excitatory or inhibitory) could start with stimulus presentation, with the saccade triggered by the stimulus or after stimulus fixation. The distance of the stimulus from the monkey was an important variable for activating many neurons. About half of the recorded neurons showed a modulation of the same sign during movement and premovement period. The other half showed an increase/decrease in activity which was of the opposite sign during movement and premovement period or part of it. In this last case the discharge changes were of the same sign when the stimulus was close to the monkey and when the monkey moved its arm to reach the objects, whereas they were of opposite sign when the stimulus was outside the animal's reach. Microstimulation of area 6a beta and the reconstruction of the locations of eye movement and arm movement related cells showed that the arm field was located more medially (and mesially) than the eye field described by Schlag and Schlag-Rey (1987). It is suggested that, unlike inferior area 6, which is mostly involved in selection of effectors on the basis of the physical properties of the objects and their spatial location (Rizzolatti and Gentilucci 1988), area 6a beta plays a role in the preparation of reaching-grasping arm movements and in their release when the appropriate conditions are set.
We observed a patient with the hypereosinophilic syndrome that showed as a prominent clinical feature peripheral nerve dysfunction. The neuropathy evolved over 4 months and affected sensory and motor functions. Nerve conduction studies and EMG were compatible with axonal neuropathy. Nerve and muscle biopsies revealed severe axonal degeneration with neurogenic atrophy of muscle. Morphometry of peroneal nerve showed marked axonal loss, more prominent in large myelinated fibers. There was no evidence of vasculitis process. Neuropathy is produced by eosinophil-released substances exerting a neurotoxic effect through direct altered vascular endothelial permeability and local mast cell histamine release.
A case of Duane retraction syndrome (DRS) is reported. The major clinical subclasses of the syndrome and the most convincing pathogenetic hypothesis are briefly discussed.
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For each of 74 simple striate cells a quantitative analysis was made of the width dimensions and spatial arrangements of the subregions responding either at light on (ON subregion) or at light off (OFF subregion). It was concluded that every cell has at least two and no more than four subregions. Cells with two subregions (57%) were much more commonly encountered than those with three (32%) or four (11%). For most cells adjacent subregions were significantly overlapped, the region of overlap responding both at light on and at light off. In the case of cells with two subregions, the overlap averaged 32% of the overall width of the two subregions. Despite the degree of the overlap, there was, on this basis, still a large measure of discrimination between cells in the simple family and those in the B-cell and complex families. In general the receptive field profiles of cells with three and four subregions were only marginally wider than those with only two subregions. In any given receptive field, the subregions tend to be roughly equal in width so that, in cells with four subregions, the subregions are, on the average, distinctly narrower than they are in cells with only two. Hypercomplex I cells tend to have receptive fields with three and four subregions much more commonly than simple cells and these cells are encountered much more frequently in cortical cell laminae 2, 3 and 4 than in lamina 6. In lamina 6 most of the cells in the simple family have receptive fields with only two subregions. The width dimensions and spatial sequences of the response peaks to moving light and dark edges were quantitatively analyzed in response profiles prepared from 82 cells. In general, for any given receptive field, the response peaks to moving edges have a one-to-one correspondence with the subregions to a stationary flashing bar. When this is not the case, the tendency is for the number of response peaks to edges to be less than the number of subregions rather than more.
Cells in the simple family respond to a moving light bar with an average response histogram that is most commonly unimodal (single peak: encounter frequency, 64%) and less commonly bimodal (33%) or trimodal (3%). The mean width of the principal response peak given by hypercomplex I cells is narrower than that of simple cells and they have a lower mean optimal stimulus velocity. In a series of 74 cells (simple, 47; hypercomplex I, 27), detailed comparison of the spatial relations between the response peaks to the moving bar and the subregions to the stationary flashing bar led to the concept of a boundary response. The term "boundary response" refers to an isolated response peak occurring as a moving light bar leaves an OFF subregion that is the last in the sequence of subregions traversed by the bar. The presence of a boundary response leads to an apparent discrepancy between the number of response peaks to a moving light bar and the number of ON subregions in the static-field plot. The boundary response is necessarily completely direction selective. A detailed comparison of the properties of cells as revealed by hand and quantitative methods showed a very good agreement between the two methods in respect to the assignment of cells to the simple, B- and complex cell families. There were, however, serious discrepancies in respect to the receptive field organization of cells in the simple family.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Quantitative estimates of the direction selectivities of 118 simple cells in response to moving light bars were expressed as a percentage calculated from the ratio of the response peaks: (preferred minus nonpreferred)/preferred. Virtually all simple cells were direction selective to some degree (mean direction selectivity 73.6%). Static-field plots to a stationary flashing bar were prepared from 74 of the 118 cells. Particular attention was given to the 42 cells with only two subregions in their static-field plot, one subregion responding at light on and the other at light off. It was concluded that interactive effects between subregions, whether synergistic or antagonistic, have little if any influence on the direction selective mechanism when the stimulus is a narrow light bar. Eighty two of the 118 cells were also tested with moving light and dark edges and of these 53 had response profiles with only two response peaks, one to the light edge and the other to the dark edge. Forty one of the 53 cells were each not only direction selective for both a light edge and a dark edge but also had a preferred direction for both edges that was the same as that for a light bar. Only two cells had preferred directions for both light and dark edges that were opposite to the direction preferred by the light bar. With one possible exception, every cell with two response static-field plot showed a one-to-one correspondence between the ordinal sequence of the response peaks and the ordinal sequence of the subregions. Depending upon the polarity of the moving edge and the ordinal sequence of the subregions, the mean level of the direction selectivity to a moving edge was significantly below that to a narrow moving light bar. This reduction in the degree of the direction selectivity appears to be due to an interaction between the subregions leading to a reduction in the amplitude of the response in the preferred direction rather than a suppression of the direction selective mechanism that operates in the nonpreferred direction. Moving edges cause a weak interactive effect between the subregions that seems always to reduce the degree of the direction selectivity, never increasing it.
A critical review of the traditional concepts of cortical association and motor areas is followed by a description of the functional organization and intrinsic and extrinsic cortical connectivity of the arcuate premotor area (APA). It is concluded that the frontal cortical organization of externally triggered purposeful movements is made possible by the associative character of Brodmann's area 6 and by its peculiar pattern of intra-areal connectivity.
There is in vision research a general unwillingness to classify or define visual cortical cell types, particularly new cell types, outside the classical simple/complex dichotomy. Cells lacking clear-cut characteristics are, therefore, considered simple by some authors and complex by others. The present unsatisfactory state has largely arisen because of the absence of any rigorous, generally accepted, classification scheme of visual cortical neurons. Actually the present two classification schemes of visual cortical neurons, that is the Hubel and Wiesel and the Bishop schemes, are generally considered to be not comparable since the former is based on the cell qualitative static-field properties as revealed by hand-held stationary flashing stimuli, whereas the latter is based on the cell quantitative dynamic-field plotting properties as revealed by moving light stimuli. Since receptive fields lacking clear-cut characteristics of simple and complex cells have been observed in area 18 of the cat as well, all the receptive field types of this area have been classified either qualitatively or quantitatively using both the Hubel and Wiesel and the Bishop classifying procedures. It has been observed, at least as far as simple cells are concerned, that the two schemes are not antithetic but, on the contrary, equivalent if averaging procedures are taken into consideration.
A short analysis of the input-output organization of the primary visual cortical areas in the cat and monkey is followed by a description of the salient microelectrophysiological properties of retino-geniculo-cortical system neurons. It is concluded that a strict hierarchical model of cortical processing of visual information is no longer tenable.
According to a modern view, simple cells of the cat striate cortex are considered to operate as a part of Fourier analysis system thus leading to the idea that the operational mechanism of the visual cortex is concerned with the analysis of spatial frequencies. Nevertheless if simple cells are really concerned only with the analysis of spatial frequencies there should exist a strict relationship between their spatial frequency selectivity and the spatial organization of their receptive fields. This is because it is the spatial organization of the spatial frequency detector i.e. the cell's receptive field that determines the cell's spatial frequency selectivity. Since the quantitative analysis of the spatial organization of simple cell receptive fields has shown that the receptive fields of these cells are made up of two to four antagonistic subregions it follows that striate simple cells are concerned with the analysis of only a selected range of spatial frequencies. Therefore striate simple cells must be considered analysers of visual signals both in spatial frequencies as well as in spatial positions.
Single unit recording has revealed the same orientation sensitive cell classes in cat area 18 as are to be found in area 17. These include particularly the various types of hypercomplex cell belonging to the S, C, and B cell families.
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