Barrel Cortex Membrane Potential Dynamics in Social Touch

Lenschow, Constanze; Brecht, Michael

doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2014.12.059

Cited by 66 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It is an open issue whether the coordination of these motor actions maximizes sensory input [30, 31], such as by sweeping odorants toward the nose. Any source of sensory input that contributes to both touch and olfaction, which are elements of social interactions [32] as well as exploration (Figure 4G), will lead to multisensory input that is likely to be phase-locked to breathing. The temporal regularity of the signals can improve the fidelity of coding of the stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coordination of Orofacial Motor Actions into Exploratory Behavior by Rat

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SUMMARY The delineation of sensorimotor circuits that guide exploration begins with an understanding of the pattern of motor outputs [1]. These motor patterns provide a clue to the form of the underlying circuits [2–4] (but see [5]). We focus on the behaviors that rodents use to explore their peripersonal space through goal-directed positioning of their nose, head, and vibrissae. Rodents sniff in response to novel odors, reward expectation, and as part of social interactions [6–12]. Sniffing serves olfaction [13, 14], while whisking synchronized to sniffing serves vibrissa-based touch [6, 15, 16]. We quantify the ethology of exploratory nose and head movements in relation to breathing. We find that sniffing is accompanied by prominent lateral and vertical de-flections of the nose, i.e., twitches, which are driven by activation of the deflector nasi muscles [17]. On the timescale of individual breaths, nose motion is rhythmic and has a maximum deflection following the onset of inspiration. On a longer timescale, excursions of the nose persist for several breaths and are accompanied by an asymmetry in vibrissa positioning toward the same side of the face. Such directed deflections can be triggered by a lateralized source of odor. Lastly, bobbing of the head as the animal cranes and explores is phase-locked to sniffing and to movement of the nose. These data, along with prior results on the resetting of the whisk cycle at the onset of inspiration [15, 16, 18], reveal that the onset of each breath initiates a “snapshot” of the orofacial sensory environment.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coordination of Orofacial Motor Actions into Exploratory Behavior by Rat

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We developed a method for investigating the neural mechanisms underlying song production in a head-fixed context, which represents a rare example of a restrained social behavior (Lenschow and Brecht, 2015; Oomura et al, 1983). Using this approach, we provided population-level support for a notion that HVC projection neurons exhibit an abstract representation of elapsed time, suggesting a scheme for encoding behavior that is divorced from the kinematics of ongoing movements (Lu and Ashe, 2015; Matsuzaka et al, 2007; Tanji and Shima, 1994).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Population-Level Representation of a Temporal Sequence Underlying Song Production in the Zebra Finch

Picardo

Merel

Katlowitz

et al. 2016

Neuron

120

152

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SUMMARY The zebra finch brain features a set of clearly defined and hierarchically arranged motor nuclei that are selectively responsible for producing singing behavior. One of these regions, a critical forebrain structure called HVC, contains premotor neurons that are active at precise timepoints during song production. However, the neural representation of this behavior at a population level remains elusive. We used 2-photon microscopy to monitor ensemble activity during singing, integrating across multiple trials by adopting a Bayesian inference approach to more precisely estimate burst timing. Additionally, we examined spiking and motor-related synaptic inputs using intracellular recordings during singing. With both experimental approaches, we find that premotor events do not preferentially occur at the onsets or offsets of song syllables or at specific subsyllabic motor landmarks. These results strongly support the notion that HVC projection neurons collectively exhibit a temporal sequence during singing that is uncoupled from ongoing movements.

show abstract

“…Females whisk onto females like a male rat would, but whisk with lower whisking amplitudes onto males 27 . Similar to humans, previous work has shown that even though whisking amplitude is lower during social facial interactions than when investigating objects, population firing rate changes 28 and membrane potential modulations 29 in rat somatosensory cortex are larger during social touch than object touch and do not correlate with whisker movements. Also similar to humans, rat somatosensory activity is modulated in a social context before actual social facial touch 29 and modulation depends on socio-sexual context, such as estrus state 28,30 and emotional state 31 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Subject sex and partner sex modulate social touch responses across multiple cortical areas

Ebbesen

Bobrov

Rao

et al. 2019

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Touch is a fundamental aspect of social, parental and sexual behavior. Despite our detailed knowledge about cortical processing of non-social touch, we still know little about how social touch cortical circuits. We investigated neural activity across five frontal, motor and sensory cortical areas in rats engaging in naturalistic social facial touch. Information about social touch and the sex of the interaction partner (a biologically significant feature) is a major determinant of cortical activity. 25.3% of units were modulated during social touch and 8.3% of units displayed 'sex-touch' responses (responded differently, depending on the sex of the interaction partner). Single-unit responses were part of a structured, partner-sex-and, in some cases, subject-sex-dependent population response. Simulations suggest that a change in inhibitory drive might underlie these population dynamics. Our observations suggest that socio-sexual characteristics of touch (subject and partner sex) widely modulate cortical activity and need to be investigated with cellular resolution. Single cortical neurons signal social touch and partner sex= 1 = −1 Figure 1 | Diverse cortical responses and variable behavioral timing during social facial touch. (a) The social gap paradigm 27 . Rats separated on two platforms will reach across the gap to engage in social facial touch. In social facial touch, rats align their snouts and whisk to palpate each other's face with their mystacial vibrissae. We recorded the behavior of male and female rats by videography from above in visual darkness under infrared illumination 29,33,34 . (b) Anatomical location of vibrissa motor cortex ('VMC'the primary motor representation of the mystacial vibrissae), cingulate cortex ('ACC'a putative homolog of human/primate anterior cingulate cortex), prelimbic cortex ('PrL'a putative homolog of human/primate medial prefrontal cortex), barrel cortex ('S1'the primary somatosensory representation of the mystacial vibrissae) and auditory cortex ('A1'). (c) Example peri-stimulus time histograms (PSTHs) of touch-activated single neurons (Wilcoxon signed-rank test), aligned to the first whisker-to-whisker touch in each social touch episode. Raster plot above shows single trials, black dots indicate single spikes and vertical line indicates beginning of social facial touch. Black line below indicates mean firing rate, smoothed with an Alpha kernel ( = 75 ms), shaded area indicates s.e.m. (d) Example PSTHs of touch-suppressed single neurons (Wilcoxon signed-rank test), aligned to the first whisker-to-whisker touch in each social touch episode. Same plotting convention as in (c). (e) Top: Histograms of touch duration (red) and inter-touch-time (blue) of social facial touch episodes. The time axes of both plots are clipped at 10 s. Below: Probability distributions of touch duration (red) and inter-touch-interval (blue) of social touch episodes, plotted on a logarithmic time scale. The two distributions span multiple orders of magnitude and strongly overlap.

show abstract

Barrel Cortex Membrane Potential Dynamics in Social Touch

Cited by 66 publications

References 27 publications

Coordination of Orofacial Motor Actions into Exploratory Behavior by Rat

Coordination of Orofacial Motor Actions into Exploratory Behavior by Rat

Population-Level Representation of a Temporal Sequence Underlying Song Production in the Zebra Finch

Subject sex and partner sex modulate social touch responses across multiple cortical areas

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About