Talk:Lateral geniculate nucleus

Entire article must be reworked
This article unfortunately became quite a mess over time. I just removed a large portion from the Functions in visual perception section, because they were written by a pseudo-scientist by the name James T. Fulton, who is active here under the pseudonym Steamboat Jim.

The main problem I think is, that the overarching goal of the article is not clear. Should it simply be a quick reference for a medical anatomical structure? Should it focus on the human brain? Or should it more focus on the biological/neuroscientific perspective, taking a comparative approach across different species?

It will be difficult to determine the level of detail, which is appropriate for this article, since there is literally a 1000 things to say about the LGN. Also, the LGN is currently a "hot" topic in neuroscience, and therefor one must be careful, which things to include and which not.

I'm currently doing my PhD working on this structure in mice. I will try to devote some time in the coming months to make this article substantially better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Schnoupiadis21 (talk • contribs) 10:59, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Intro
So there are multiple parts of this article that are taken word for word from "From Neuron to Brain" 4th edition by Nicholls et al., esp. from pages 408-409. I will work on changing this but would like some help, esp from the original writer of the pulled lines! -JeffreyN  03:55, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I have the book in front of me (and coincidentally I am on the same page). What I can't seem to figure it, is that it says layers 1,4, and 6 are suplied from the contralatteral eye, but what does that mean?  I think there are two sides to the LGN, a left and a right LGN, then the whole contralateral, ipsilateral arguement would make sense Paskari 17:11, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and included the line 'w.r.t the left or right LGN' when the term ipsilateral or contralateral was used. Paskari 17:15, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Layers
I don't understand why the layers 6,4,1 contralateral, and 2,3,5 ipsilateral. You'd expect the rows to switch such that it would be 1,3,5 and 2,4,6. I realize that From Neuron to Brain says it's so, but it's not a very reliable book on this matter seeing as how it only has roughly 2 pages only on the LGN! Paskari 21:06, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Layers
I don't understand why the layers 6,4,1 contralateral, and 2,3,5 ipsilateral. You'd expect the rows to switch such that it would be 1,3,5 and 2,4,6. I realize that From Neuron to Brain says it's so, but it's not a very reliable book on this matter seeing as how it only has roughly 2 pages only on the LGN! Paskari 21:06, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

"Neuroscience Exploring the Brain", Bear, Connors and Paradiso, 3rd Ed 2006 Agrees with "From Neuron to Brain" See diagram on page 318. So the top 4 layers alternate but the bottom two are switched. Maybe not so odd. We see that layer 2 projects to layer 3 but layer 1 obviously has to skip two layers to get to layer 4. I wonder if this has any significance in later processing. Maybe there is very small timeshift introduced by having slightly different physical routing structures. DrDavidGreen53 11:44, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Burst vs Tonic mode
We need a description of the two spiking modes of the geniculate cells, if I fully understood it, I would do it myself Paskari 16:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Lagged vs non lagged cells
Likewise, we need a description on these two cell types Paskari 16:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

body = nucleus
please say somewhere in the article that LGN equals the lateral geniculate body. Is one a gross anatomy and one is a functional nucleus way of saying it? same thing but different ways of looking at it? or what? 207.151.233.38 (talk) 19:17, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

This article needs serious reworking!
Hi,

This article is currently not fit-for-purpose: do not quote it..

I just want to make the point that this article is grossly inaccurate in key areas such as the 'function' section. I, sadly, don't have the time to rewrite the article, but wanted to flag up those key bits missing:

- Main functions of the LGN include the dynamic modulation of information being relayed to the visual cortex.

- It is not thought to play a major role in receptive field elaboration. Early receptive field analyses by people such as Hubel and Wiesel (1977) showed no elaboration of receptive fields, in the same way that occurs in retinal layers and the visual cortex. Hence, the LGN was for decades thought to be simply a 'relay'. - LGN inputs - retinogeniculate axons - visual cortex (modulation of retinal info) - pulvinar region (modulation of retinal info) - parabrachial midbrain region (mod. of ret. info) - other afferents including raphe nucleus, tuberomamillary nucleus

... nonretinal afferents to the LGN ARE KEY TO ITS MODULATORY FUNCTION!!

...the function of the LGN is NOT UNKNOWN! - it remains to be fully elucidated, but thats normal for the brain; in comparison to other thalamic nuclei the LGN function is well studied and the subject of much experimentation

Other comments on this article:

- M/P/K pathways are indeed not agreed upon. This extends to their functions, as far as i'm aware there is little solid data to support the 'functions' table in this article. In any case, it's not referenced. - the ispsi/contra section section should be incorporated into structure. Bits about visual perception should be scratched, and the reader referred to other articles. -The bit about the tarsier primate is unnecessary and misleading. Pretty much all mammals that use their vision a lot (ie cats, not moles) have a well developed LGN with a laminar structure. Numbers differ, from 3 in the cat (A, A1 and C) to six in the macaque, and possibly more in the human (Hickey and Guillery, 1979)

Please, if someone has the time and more importantly EXPERTISE, edit this article. It seems like a lot of it has been lifted from broader neuro texts.

Excellent resources are :

1.	Visual Relays in the Thalamus (2003) Sherman and Guillery in ‘ The Visual Neurosciences (ed. Chalupa and Werner) Vol.1 MIT press, London 2.	‘Thalamus’ Vol. 1 Organisation and function. (1997) Steriade, Jones and McCormick; Elsevier Science, Oxford UK 3.	‘The Thalamus’ (1985) Jones EJ, Plenum Press NY

Although 2 is extremely dense and not for the faint hearted.

Hope this is of some use to a budding editor with time on their hands.

Tom, final year intercalating medic at UCL —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.82.242.98 (talk) 16:23, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

General Comments on LGN
1. It is not quite correct to say that the function of the LGN is unknown. Clearly its function is, at least partly, to relay visual information from the eyes to the visual cortex. However, it is true that we do not understand why it is necessary to relay this information via the complex circuitry of the visual thalamus. So it would be better to say that the lgn relays visual information from the eyes to the visual cortex, but that it not understood why such a complicated relay is necessary.

2. It would be useful to give the number of neurons in the human lgn. Some of the other Wikipedia articles do give this information for other thalamic nuclei.Paulhummerman (talk) 21:28, 22 October 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulhummerman (talk • contribs) 21:15, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

3. While it is true that the Dong-Atick article cited does suggest a role for lgn in temporal decorrelation, it is somewhat misleading to say that the retina decorrelates spatially, and the lgn temporally. The ganglion cell RF is not just center-surround but also temporally reversing, and this accomplishes temporal decorrelation (e.g. see the book by Abbott and Dayan). It would be more correct to say that the lgn might modify the spatiotemporal decorrelation already seen in the retina, but I think it might be simplest just to omit speculations about the role of the lgn in temporal decorrelation. I also think it would be safest to omit ANY mention of possible RF modifications by lgn, this is a somewhat controversial area, and the RF modifications are minor and may be incidental to far more important (though mysterious) things the lgn is doing.Paulhummerman (talk) 21:28, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

ref


-- Jytdog (talk) 09:33, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Principle Vs principal
There are lots of places where these words are confused. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.12.82.45 (talk) 21:27, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Location?
I don't know how this could be included, but I would think that the location of the LGN should be somewhere in this article. Netter's Atlas of Neuroanatomy (a link at: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/netteratlasofneuroanatomyandneurophysiology-140129120400-phpapp01/95/netter-atlas-of-neuroanatomy-and-neurophysiology-8-1024.jpg?cb=1401544010 ) shows it to be just posterior to the uncus on the inferior or basal aspect of the human brain, but that drawing is copyrighted, I think, so couldn't be used in this article.UnderEducatedGeezer (talk) 08:33, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I see my link above to basal surface of brain no longer works, here's one which should: https://web.duke.edu/brain/siteParts/images/netter101.jpg
 * Perhaps also note that in the Structure section of this article, on the mostly yellow picture of the thalamus, the inferior portions of the pulvinar and lateral and medial geniculate bodies show as 'bumps' on the inferior (basal) surface of the brain. UnderEducatedGeezer (talk) 22:08, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Entire article must be reworked
This article unfortunately became quite a mess over time. I just removed a large portion from the Functions in visual perception section, because they were written by a pseudo-scientist by the name James T. Fulton, who is active here under the pseudonym Steamboat Jim.

The main problem I think is, that the overarching goal of the article is not clear. Should it simply be a quick reference for a medical anatomical structure? Should it focus on the human brain? Or should it more focus on the biological/neuroscientific perspective, taking a comparative approach across different species?

It will be difficult to determine the level of detail, which is appropriate for this article, since there is literally a 1000 things to say about the LGN. Also, the LGN is currently a "hot" topic in neuroscience, and therefor one must be careful, which things to include and which not.

I'm currently doing my PhD working on this structure in mice. I will try to devote some time in the coming months to make this article substantially better. --Schnoupiadis21 (talk) 11:01, 28 April 2022 (UTC)