Central Signals Rapidly Switch Tactile Processing in Rat Barrel Cortex during Whisker Movements

Hentschke, Harald; Haiss, Florent; Schwarz, Cornelius

doi:10.1093/cercor/bhj056

Cited by 93 publications

(116 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…3 and 9). In light of the results of Hentschke et al (2005), the slow wave we observed, although triggered by the first input volley, might be initiated centrally, propagating back to and within S1. This is consistent with the superficial-to-deeper layer propagation we observed (Fig.…”

Section: Artificial Versus Natural Whiskingmentioning

confidence: 63%

“…In awake rats, responses in the barrel cortex are modulated during active touch (Krupa et al, 2004;Ferezou et al, 2006). Active whisking increases background activity (Hentschke et al, 2005) and reduces response amplitude for passive but not active touch (Crochet and Petersen, 2006;Ferezou et al, 2006). In our paradigm, initiation of artificial whisking transiently increases background activity (e.g., slow wave in Figs.…”

Section: Artificial Versus Natural Whiskingmentioning

confidence: 81%

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Layer-Specific Touch-Dependent Facilitation and Depression in the Somatosensory Cortex during Active Whisking

Derdikman¹,

Yu²,

Haidarliu³

et al. 2006

J. Neurosci.

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Brains adapt to new situations by retuning their neurons. The most common form of neuronal adaptation, typically observed with repetitive stimulations of passive sensory organs, is depression (responses gradually decrease until stabilized). We studied cortical adaptation when stimuli are acquired by active movements of the sensory organ. In anesthetized rats, artificial whisking was induced at 5 Hz, and activity of individual neurons in layers 2-5 was recorded during whisking in air (Whisking condition) and whisking against an object (Touch condition). Response strengths were assessed by spike counts. Input-layer responses (layers 4 and 5a) usually facilitated during the whisking train, whereas superficial responses (layer 2/3) usually depressed. In layers 2/3 and 4, but not 5a, responses were usually stronger during touch trials than during whisking in air. Facilitations were specific to the protraction phase; during retraction, responses depressed in all layers and conditions. These dynamic processes were accompanied by a slow positive wave of activity progressing from superficial to deeper layers and lasting for ϳ1 s, during the transient phase of response. Our results indicate that, in the cortex, adaptation does not depend only on the level of activity or the frequency of its repetition but rather on the nature of the sensory information that is conveyed by that activity and on the processing layer. The input and laminar specificities observed here are consistent with the hypothesis that the paralemniscal layer 5a is involved in the processing of whisker motion, whereas the lemniscal barrels in layer 4 are involved in the processing of object identity.

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Section: Artificial Versus Natural Whiskingmentioning

confidence: 63%

Section: Artificial Versus Natural Whiskingmentioning

confidence: 81%

Layer-Specific Touch-Dependent Facilitation and Depression in the Somatosensory Cortex during Active Whisking

Derdikman¹,

Yu²,

Haidarliu³

et al. 2006

J. Neurosci.

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“…This is of particular concern as modulation of the whisker sensory system by motor behavior has been observed by a number of researchers (Castro-Alamancos and Oldford 2002;Fanselow and Nicolelis 1999). Furthermore, it is known that the behavioral modification of S1bf to sensory afferents persists even after transection of the infraorbital nerve (Hentschke et al 2006), suggesting that this modulation is generated by the brain and not induced by stimuli. Therefore, the use of ICMS to bypass the sensory periphery was insufficient to address this issue, although, while it has been found that ICMS-evoked oscillations in S1bf vary as a function of behavior (Venkatraman and Carmena 2009), this modulation was observed to occur after the positive and negative features described in this work, during the return to baseline excitation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Dynamic changes of rodent somatosensory barrel cortex are correlated with learning a novel conditioned stimulus

Long

Carmena

2013

Journal of Neurophysiology

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Long JD 2nd, Carmena JM. Dynamic changes of rodent somatosensory barrel cortex are correlated with learning a novel conditioned stimulus. J Neurophysiol 109: 2585-2595, 2013. First published March 6, 2013 doi:10.1152/jn.00553.2012.-The rodent somatosensory barrel cortex (S1bf) has proved a valuable model for studying neural plasticity in vivo. It has been observed that sensory deprivation or conditioning reorganizes sensory-driven activity within S1bf. These observations suggest a role for S1bf in somatosensory learning. This study evaluated the hypothesis that the response properties of extracellularly recorded neurons in S1bf would change as subjects learned to respond to stimulation of S1bf. Intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) of S1bf was used as a means for bypassing feedforward drive from the sensory periphery, midbrain, and thalamus while exciting local cortical networks. To separate the learning of this conditioned stimulus-conditioned response (CS-CR) from other elements of the task, we employed a cross-modal transfer schedule. Long-Evans rats were initially trained to respond to an auditory stimulus. All subjects were then implanted in both S1bfs with chronic microwire arrays for recording neural activity and delivering ICMS. Next, this association was transferred to ICMS of one hemisphere's S1bf. S1bf responded to ICMS with a brief increase in firing rate followed by a longer reduction in activity. We observed that the duration of reduced activity elicited by ICMS increased as the subjects began to respond correctly more often than expected by chance, and the magnitude of the initial positive response increased as they consolidated this CS-CR. Subsequent ICMS of the opposite S1bf revealed that this CS-CR did not generalize across hemispheres. These results suggest that a mechanism involving a single hemisphere's S1bf tunes cortical responses in concert with changes in rodent behavior during somatosensory learning.behavior; learning; microstimulation; rat; somatosensory learning THE RODENT VIBRISSA SYSTEM has proved a promising model system for investigating how the brain adaptively integrates sensory and motor information to generate perception (Diamond et al. 2008;Kleinfeld et al. 1999;Petersen 2007). Previous work has shown how the stimulus-driven responses of the vibrissa system, from the trigeminal ganglion to the somatosensory barrel cortex (S1bf), depend on the behavioral state of the animal (Leiser and Moxon 2007; Wiest and Nicolelis 2003). Specifically, the responses of S1bf neurons to whisker stimulation have been shown to vary dependent on whether the animal is anesthetized or awake (Petersen et al. 2003) and attentive or inattentive (Ferezou et al. 2007). Moreover, the functional reorganization of S1bf induced by sensory deprivation (Allen et al. 2002;Fox 2002) or aversive conditioning (Bekisz et al. 2010; Urban-Cieko et al. 2010) has demonstrated that the barrel cortex is highly plastic. Whether and how these changes in S1bf activity relate to the learning process remains unclear.The di...

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“…Assuming a whisking frequency of ϳ7 Hz and touch times of 50 ms per single whisk (von Heimendahl et al, 2007) these strips of data would be integrated using the short time constant found in the present study and then separated by ϳ100 ms to the next touch time by suppression of signal flow in barrel cortex. In future studies it has to be worked out whether neuronal activity generated by active whisking (Fanselow and Nicolelis, 1999;Hentschke et al, 2006) may recruit memory systems, not available to our passively detecting rats, that in addition integrates information acquired across repetitive whisker strokes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integration of Vibrotactile Signals for Whisker-Related Perception in Rats Is Governed by Short Time Constants: Comparison of Neurometric and Psychometric Detection Performance

Stüttgen¹,

Schwarz²

2010

J. Neurosci.

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Rats explore environments by sweeping their whiskers across objects and surfaces. Both sensor movement and repetitive sweeping typical for this behavior require that vibrotactile signals are integrated over time. While temporal integration properties of neurons along the whisker somatosensory pathway have been studied extensively, the consequences for behavior are unknown. Here, we investigate the ability of headfixed rats to integrate information over time for the detection of near-threshold pulsatile deflection sequences applied to a single whisker. Psychometric detection performance was assessed with whisker stimuli composed of different numbers of pulses (1-31) delivered at varying frequencies (10, 20, 100 Hz). Detection performance indeed improved with increasing number and frequency of pulses, albeit this improvement was much lower than predicted by probabilistic combination, suggesting highly sublinear integration of pulses. This behavioral observation was reflected in the firing properties of concomitantly recorded barrel cortex neurons, which showed substantial response adaptation to repetitive whisker deflection. To estimate the integration time with which barrel cortex neuronal activity must be read out to match behavior, we constructed a model monitoring spiking activity of simulated neuronal pools, where spike trains were channeled through a leaky integrator with exponential decay. Detection was accomplished by simple threshold crossings. This simple model gave an excellent match of neurometric and psychometric data at surprisingly small time constants of 5-8 ms, thus limiting integration largely to Ͻ25 ms. This result carries important implications regarding sensory processing for whisker-mediated perception.

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Central Signals Rapidly Switch Tactile Processing in Rat Barrel Cortex during Whisker Movements

Cited by 93 publications

References 66 publications

Layer-Specific Touch-Dependent Facilitation and Depression in the Somatosensory Cortex during Active Whisking

Layer-Specific Touch-Dependent Facilitation and Depression in the Somatosensory Cortex during Active Whisking

Dynamic changes of rodent somatosensory barrel cortex are correlated with learning a novel conditioned stimulus

Integration of Vibrotactile Signals for Whisker-Related Perception in Rats Is Governed by Short Time Constants: Comparison of Neurometric and Psychometric Detection Performance

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