The lateral posterior (LP) nucleus is a higher order thalamic nucleus that is believed to play a key role in the transmission of visual information between cortical areas. Two types of cortical terminals have been identified in higher order nuclei, large (type II) and smaller (type I), which have been proposed to drive and modulate, respectively, the response properties of thalamic cells (Sherman and Guillery [1998] Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 95:7121-7126). The aim of this study was to assess and compare the relative contribution of driver and modulator inputs to the LP nucleus that originate from the posteromedial part of the lateral suprasylvian cortex (PMLS) and area 17. To achieve this goal, the anterograde tracers biotinylated dextran amine (BDA) or Phaseolus vulgaris leucoagglutinin (PHAL) were injected into area 17 or PMLS. Results indicate that area 17 injections preferentially labelled large terminals, whereas PMLS injections preferentially labelled small terminals. A detailed analysis of PMLS terminal morphology revealed at least four categories of terminals: small type I terminals (57%), medium-sized to large singletons (30%), large terminals in arrangements of intermediate complexity (8%), and large terminals that form arrangements resembling rosettes (5%). Ultrastructural analysis and postembedding immunocytochemical staining for gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) distinguished two types of labelled PMLS terminals: small profiles with round vesicles (RS profiles) that contacted mostly non-GABAergic dendrites outside of glomeruli and large profiles with round vesicles (RL profiles) that contacted non-GABAergic dendrites (55%) and GABAergic dendritic terminals (45%) in glomeruli. RL profiles likely include singleton, intermediate, and rosette terminals, although future studies are needed to establish definitively the relationship between light microscopic morphology and ultrastructural features. All terminals types appeared to be involved in reciprocal corticothalamocortical connections as a result of an intermingling of terminals labelled by anterograde transport and cells labelled by retrograde transport. In conclusion, our results indicate that the origin of the driver inputs reaching the LP nucleus is not restricted to the primary visual cortex and that extrastriate visual areas might also contribute to the basic organization of visual receptive fields of neurons in this higher order nucleus.
2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.