HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY ARTICLE published: 06 December 2013 SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2013.00104 The visual corticostriatal loop through the tail of the caudate: circuitry and function CarolA.Seger* Program in Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA Edited by: Although high level visual cortex projects to a specific region of the striatum, the tail of the Ahmed A. Moustafa, University of caudate, and participates in corticostriatal loops, the function of this visual corticostriatal Western Sydney, Australia system is not well understood. This article first reviews what is known about the anatomy Reviewed by: of the visual corticostriatal loop across mammals, including rodents, cats, monkeys, and Erick J. Paul, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, USA humans. Like other corticostriatal systems, the visual corticostriatal system includes Greg Ashby, University of California, both closed loop components (recurrent projections that return to the originating cortical Santa Barbara, USA location) and open loop components (projections that terminate in other neural regions). *Correspondence: The article then reviews what previous empirical research has shown about the function Carol A. Seger, Program in of the tail of the caudate. The article finally addresses the possible functions of the closed Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Neuroscience, Department of and open loop connections of the visual loop in the context of theories and computational Psychology, Colorado State models of corticostriatal function. University, Mail code 1876, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA Keywords: striatum, caudate, category learning, basal ganglia, corticostriatal, recurrent neural network, e-mail:
[email protected] reinforcement learning, Area TE INTRODUCTION forming both open and closed loops.