Pioneer Neurons and Target Selection in Cerebral Cortical Development
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
The construction of any nervous system from that of the simplest invertebrate to that of the most complex mammal requires the solution of several major problems. Neurons must be generated in appropriate numbers and locations, axons must select correct pathways to their targets, and, once there, the appropriate patterns of connections must be formed. In invertebrates, many observations suggest that axonal pathways are laid down very early, when distances are small, as the axons of pioneer neurons navigate terrain traversed subsequently by appropriate subsets of later-generated axons (Goodman et al. 1984). The early formation of many axonal pathways also occurs in mammalian nervous system development. For example, in the adult visual system, retinal ganglion cells project to the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), which in turn projects to the neurons of layer 4 of the primary visual cortex. During development, ganglion cells and LGN neurons are generated at about the same...
