15 Years of Frontiers in Neuroanatomy: The Circuits Behind The Visual Cortex

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Background

This Research Topic is part of the 15-Year Anniversary of Frontiers in Neuroanatomy Research Topic series. These special collections have been organized in collaboration with the Neuroscience portfolio at Frontiers to celebrate the 15-Year Anniversary of the journal. The aim of this series is to highlight some of the most impactful research areas in the field. This specific collection will provide discussions around the latest advances in the circuits underlying the visual cortex as well as new research on this important topic.

By following its mission to freely disseminate high-quality research with a worldwide reach, Frontiers in Neuroanatomy will continue to play a key role in accelerating the progress in neuroanatomy research and making Open Science a global reality.

This Research Topic article collection focuses on the neuroanatomy of the visual cortex and its related structures. Primates including human beings are highly dependent on vision in their lives. Reflecting the needs of this lifestyle, the visual system has been the most widely studied among systems neuroscience fields in mammalian brains. Much of the anatomy, topographic organization, and functional response properties of the visual system are relatively well understood. However, its development, evolution, and structural-functional relationships are still a major missing link in neuroscience-inspired computational models of visual processing, most likely because this fundamental question has not been addressed yet.
Answering this question requires in-depth discussions of what we can learn from neuroanatomy to understand functional and computational aspects of visual processing, and collaborative efforts among visual neuroscientists who are experts in the use of different experimental techniques, in different mammals. This motivates us to organize a new Frontiers in Neuroanatomy Research Topic, which will welcome manuscripts on studies aiming to address questions regarding structure-function relationships in the mammalian visual system.

This Research Topic welcomes contributions from researchers around the globe in the form of Original Research, Review, Mini Review, and Perspectives focusing on, but not limited to the following subtopics:

• Functional organization of the retina
• Functional organization of the subcortical visual systems, such as the lateral geniculate nucleus, superior colliculus, and pulvinar complex (retinotopic maps, topographic organization, response properties)
• Functional organization of the visual cortex (retinotopic maps, topographic connectivity, laminar/columnar architecture);
• Parallel visual pathways: parvo vs. magno; dorsal (motion) vs. ventral (color, shape) visual pathways; Hierarchy of visual cortices.
• Comparative studies which highlight organizational principles that are relevant for understanding function
• Development of the structure and function of the visual system, and its evolution of the molecular basis
• Computational models linking structural/anatomical data with functional properties in the visual system
• Blindsight: vision without perception
• Foveal vision and macular degeneration
• The multimodal integration between the visual system and other systems, such as visuomotor or audiovisual integration
• Molecular cell types and their connections to the visual system
• Synaptic connections and GABAergic circuits of the visual cortex and related structures
• Whole brain single-neuron reconstructions of the visual cortex

Keywords: visual cortex, retina, subcortical visual systems, parallel visual pathways, blindsight, foveal vision, macular degeneration, visuomotor, audiovisual, circuits, 15 years of Frontiers in Neuroanatomy

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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