Cell Type Specific Representation of Vibro-tactile Stimuli in the Mouse Primary Somatosensory Cortex

Frontiers in Neural Circuits

Takashi Yoshida¹  Ayako Hayashi²  Kenichi Ohki⁵ 

[1] CREST, Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED), Tokyo, Japan;Department of Dermatology, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan;Department of Molecular Physiology, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan;Department of Physiology, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan;International Research Center for Neurointelligence (WPI-IRCN), The University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Studies (UTIAS), Tokyo, Japan;

关键词: somatosensory cortex;    vibro-tactile sensation;    inhibitory cells;    functional subnetworks;    two-photon imaging;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fncir.2018.00109

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Although the processing of whisker deflections in the barrel area of the rodent primary somatosensory cortex (S1) has been studied extensively, how cutaneous vibro-tactile stimuli are processed in the rodent S1 outside the barrel area has not been fully examined. Particularly, the cell-type specific representation of multiple vibration frequencies in genetically identified inhibitory cells in the S1 has not been examined. Using two-photon calcium imaging, we examined the responses to vibration stimuli of excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the S1 hind limb area of male and female mice. The excitatory cells showed relatively sharp selectivity to vibration stimuli, whereas the inhibitory cells exhibited less selectivity. The excitatory and inhibitory cells with different preferred stimuli were intermingled in a “salt and pepper” manner. Furthermore, the noise correlation tended to be especially strong in excitatory-inhibitory and inhibitory-inhibitory cell pairs that have similar stimulus selectivity. These results suggest that excitatory cells tend to represent specific stimulus information and work together with similarly tuned inhibitory cells as a functionally connected network.

【 授权许可】

Unknown