Impact of Visual Corticostriatal Loop Disruption on Neural Processing within the Parahippocampal Place Area

The caudate nucleus is a part of the visual corticostriatal loop (VCSL), receiving input from different visual areas and projecting back to the same cortical areas via globus pallidus, substantia nigra, and thalamus. Despite perceptual and navigation impairments in patients with VCSL disruption due to caudate atrophy (e.g., Huntington's disease, HD), the relevance of the caudate nucleus and VCSL on cortical visual processing is not fully understood. In a series of fMRI experiments, we found that the caudate showed a stronger functional connection to parahippocampal place area (PPA) compared with adjacent regions (e.g., fusiform face area, FFA) within the temporal visual cortex. Consistent with this functional link, the caudate showed a higher response to scenes compared with faces, similar to the PPA. Testing the impact of VCSL disruption on neural processes within PPA, HD patients showed reduced scene-selective activity within PPA compared with healthy matched controls. In contrast, the level of selective activity in adjacent cortical and subcortical face-selective areas (i.e., FFA and amygdala) remained intact. These results show some of the first evidence for the direct impact and potential clinical significance of VCSL on the generation of "selective" activity within PPA.
SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Visual perception is often considered the product of a multistage feedforward neural processing between visual cortical areas, ignoring the likely impact of corticosubcortical loops on this process. Here, we provide evidence for the contribution of visual corticostriatal loop and the caudate nucleus on generating selective response within parahippocampal place area (PPA). Our results show that disruption of this loop in Huntington's disease patients reduces the level of selective activity within PPA, which may lead to related perceptual impairments in these patients.