Magnocellular part

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Magnocellular parts, also called M cells, are cells in the brain concerned primarily with visual perception. In particular these cells are responsible for resolving motion and coarse outlines. The cells have large, fast-conducting neurons and transmit information to the lateral geniculate nucleus, where the information they carry is sent on to the visual cortices, possibly after editing and gating by visual cortex exerting top-down control. The M-cells feed more to the parietal cortices, in the dorsal 'where' stream, than the temporal cortices, destination of the ventral 'what' stream. This is consistent with their coding of movement and edges as opposed to fine detail. This system of cells operates with great speed at the expense of detail.

[edit] See also

• Magnocellular neurosecretory cell
• Parvocellular part