Selective collateralization of transcriptomically distinct neurons organizes visual-stream output from the primary visual cortex

Abstract

Parallel visual streams segregate information into pathways specialized for distinct computations, but how this segregation is achieved by anatomical segregation of primary visual cortex output remains unclear. This problem is complicated because individual neurons frequently send broadcasting projections to multiple cortical areas, and the target choice depends on both topographical location and molecular identity. Here we developed axonal BARseq2 to jointly map gene expression and high-resolution axonal projections from 1,448 neurons spanning the mouse primary visual cortex (VISp). Axonal BARseq2 recapitulated projection patterns observed by bulk tracing and single-neuron reconstruction, and recovered transcriptomic identities consistent with reference snRNA-seq datasets. Retinotopy strongly predicted projections to individual cortical targets, particularly for areas proximal to VISp, but explained little of which areas are frequently co-innervated. Instead, co-innervation patterns defined three preferential output pathways that largely corresponded to the ventral stream and two subdivisions of the dorsal stream. These pathways were associated with fine-grained transcriptional identities of L4/5 intra-telencephalic neurons, which were further validated with an external MERFISH dataset. Thus, VISp output is organized by two distinct rules: retinotopy constrains where neurons project, whereas cell-type-associated collateralization constrains which targets are co-innervated. This selective broadcasting, in which single neurons reach many higher visual areas in cell-type-specific combinations, could provide an anatomical substrate for visual-stream segregation at the level of VISp output in mice.