Dexterous manual movement facilitates information processing in the primary somatosensory cortex: A magnetoencephalographic study

Selective attention regulates spatial and intensity information processing in the human primary somatosensory cortex

Neuroreport ◽

10.1097/00001756-200212030-00033 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 13 (17) ◽

pp. 2335-2339 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Yoshinobu Iguchi ◽

Yoko Hoshi ◽

Masato Tanosaki ◽

Masato Taira ◽

Isao Hashimoto

Keyword(s):

Information Processing ◽

Selective Attention ◽

Somatosensory Cortex ◽

Primary Somatosensory Cortex ◽

Intensity Information

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Cortical and thalamic contributions to response dynamics across layers of the primary somatosensory cortex during tactile discrimination

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.00108.2015 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 114 (3) ◽

pp. 1652-1676 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Miguel Pais-Vieira ◽

Carolina Kunicki ◽

Po-He Tseng ◽

Joel Martin ◽

Mikhail Lebedev ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Information Processing ◽

Somatosensory Cortex ◽

Information Transfer ◽

Primary Somatosensory Cortex ◽

Neural Dynamics ◽

Response Dynamics ◽

Tactile Discrimination ◽

Tactile Information ◽

Medial Nucleus ◽

Posterior Medial Nucleus

Tactile information processing in the rodent primary somatosensory cortex (S1) is layer specific and involves modulations from both thalamocortical and cortico-cortical loops. However, the extent to which these loops influence the dynamics of the primary somatosensory cortex while animals execute tactile discrimination remains largely unknown. Here, we describe neural dynamics of S1 layers across the multiple epochs defining a tactile discrimination task. We observed that neuronal ensembles within different layers of the S1 cortex exhibited significantly distinct neurophysiological properties, which constantly changed across the behavioral states that defined a tactile discrimination. Neural dynamics present in supragranular and granular layers generally matched the patterns observed in the ventral posterior medial nucleus of the thalamus (VPM), whereas the neural dynamics recorded from infragranular layers generally matched the patterns from the posterior nucleus of the thalamus (POM). Selective inactivation of contralateral S1 specifically switched infragranular neural dynamics from POM-like to those resembling VPM neurons. Meanwhile, ipsilateral M1 inactivation profoundly modulated the firing suppression observed in infragranular layers. This latter effect was counterbalanced by contralateral S1 block. Tactile stimulus encoding was layer specific and selectively affected by M1 or contralateral S1 inactivation. Lastly, causal information transfer occurred between all neurons in all S1 layers but was maximal from infragranular to the granular layer. These results suggest that tactile information processing in the S1 of awake behaving rodents is layer specific and state dependent and that its dynamics depend on the asynchronous convergence of modulations originating from ipsilateral M1 and contralateral S1.

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Sensory stimulus evoked responses in layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons of the hind paw-related mouse primary somatosensory cortex

10.1101/2020.08.30.274308 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Guillaume Bony ◽

Arjun A Bhaskaran ◽

Katy Le Corf ◽

Andreas Frick

Keyword(s):

Information Processing ◽

Somatosensory Cortex ◽

Pyramidal Neurons ◽

Barrel Cortex ◽

Sensory Information ◽

Primary Somatosensory Cortex ◽

List Type ◽

Evoked Responses ◽

Spontaneous Firing ◽

Layer 2

ABSTRACTThe mouse primary somatosensory cortex (S1) processes tactile sensory information and is the largest neocortex area emphasizing the importance of this sensory modality for rodent behavior. Most of our knowledge regarding information processing in S1 stems from studies of the whisker-related barrel cortex (S1–BC), yet the processing of tactile inputs from the hind-paws is poorly understood. We used in vivo whole-cell patch-clamp recordings from layer (L) 2/3 pyramidal neurons (PNs) of the S1 hind-paw (S1-HP) region of anaesthetized wild type (WT) mice to investigate their evoked sub- and supra-threshold activity, intrinsic properties, and spontaneous activity. Approximately 45% of these L2/3 PNs responded to brief contralateral HP stimulation in a subthreshold manner, ~5% fired action potentials, and ~50% of L2/3 PNs did not respond at all. The evoked subthreshold responses had long onset- (~23 ms) and peak-latencies (~61 ms). The majority (86%) of these L2/3 PNs responded to prolonged (stance-like) HP stimulation with both on- and off-responses. HP stimulation responsive L2/3 PNs had a greater intrinsic excitability compared to non-responsive ones, possibly reflecting differences in their physiological role. Similar to S1-BC, L2/3 PNs displayed up- and down-states, and low spontaneous firing rates (~0.1 Hz). Our findings support a sparse coding scheme of operation for S1–HP L2/3 PNs and highlight both differences and similarities with L2/3 PNs from other somatosensory cortex areas.KEY POINTSResponses of layer (L) 2/3 pyramidal neurons (PNs) of the primary somatosensory hind-paw cortex (S1-HP) to contralateral hind-paw stimulation reveal both differences and similarities compared to those of somatosensory neurons responding to other tactile (e.g. whiskers, forepaw, tongue) modalities.Similar to whisker-related barrel cortex (S1-BC) and forepaw cortex (S1-FP) S1-HP L2/3 PNs show a low spontaneous firing rate and a sparse action potential coding of evoked activity.In contrast to S1-BC, brief hind-paw stimulus evoked responses display a long latency in S1-HP neurons consistent with their different functional role.The great majority of L 2/3 PNs respond to prolonged hind-paw stimulation with both on- and off-responses.These results help us to better understand sensory information processing within layer 2/3 of the neocortex and the regional differences related to various tactile modalities.

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