PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Katja Reinhard
AU  - Chen Li
AU  - Quan Do
AU  - Emily Burke
AU  - Steven Heynderickx
AU  - Karl Farrow
TI  - Target specific routing of visual information by the superior colliculus
AID  - 10.1101/272914
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 272914
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/28/272914.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/28/272914.full
AB  - The superior colliculus is an important node in the visual system that receives inputs from the retina and distributes these visual features to various downstream brain nuclei. It remains unknown how these circuits are wired to enable specific and reliable information processing. Here the retinal ganglion cells at the beginning of two such circuits, one targeting the pulvinar and the other the parabigeminal nucleus, were labeled using mono-synaptically restricted rabies tracing. Instead of a fuzzy distribution of the retinal outputs, we delineate clear preferences in how information is routed to these two targets. Three retinal ganglion cell types selectively innervated circuits projecting to the pulvinar, six are preferentially routed to the parabigeminal nucleus, and three innervate both circuits. This work argues that neural circuits of the superior colliculus are based on a dedicated set of connections between specific retinal ganglion cell types and different targets of the superior colliculus.