Magnocellular cell

They are termed "magnocellular" since they are characterized by their relatively large size compared to parvocellular cells.

The full details of the flow of signaling from the eye to the visual cortex of the brain that result in the experience of vision are incompletely understood.

[13] This information is also useful for detecting the difference in positions of objects on the retina of each eye, an important tool in binocular depth perception.

[10][15] The information sent to the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) of the posterior parietal cortex allows the M pathway to direct attention and guide saccadic eye movements to follow important moving objects in the visual field.

[13] This ability has led some neuroscientists to hypothesize that the purpose of the M pathway is not to detect spatial locations, but to guide actions related to the position and motion of objects.

One theory suggests that the nonlinearity, size, and compensation of miniature eye movements of M cells all help to focus on a single target and blur the surroundings, which is crucial in reading.

The KIAA0319 gene on chromosome six controls cell migration to the LGN during development; and studies in transgenic mice and on brains of people with dyslexia examined after they died, show malformations in the LGN and cells expressing KIAA0319 growing in the wrong place.

[8] M cells are vulnerable to antineuronal antibodies which attack and render them unusable in the magnocellular pathway.

Since the magnocellular system is sensitive to image movement, and dyslexia is posited to be caused by abnormalities in M cells, dyslexics tend to focus on words longer, take shorter scans when reading, and stop more often per line.