Differential effects of aging on fore- and hindpaw maps of rat somatosensory cortex
| Autor: | Thomas Berkefeld, Roberto F. Zepka, Hubert R. Dinse, Marianne David-Jürgens, Lydia Churs |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2008 |
| Předmět: |
Aging
lcsh:Medicine Stimulation Sensory system Hindlimb Walking Biology Somatosensory system Neuroscience/Motor Systems Forelimb medicine Reaction Time Animals skin and connective tissue diseases lcsh:Science Neurons Multidisciplinary Neuroscience/Behavioral Neuroscience Foot Neuroscience/Sensory Systems lcsh:R Cognition Anatomy Somatosensory Cortex Differential effects Adaptation Physiological Rats medicine.anatomical_structure Receptive field lcsh:Q sense organs Neuroscience Research Article |
| Zdroj: | PLoS ONE, Vol 3, Iss 10, p e3399 (2008) PLoS ONE |
| ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
| Popis: | Getting older is associated with a decline of cognitive and sensorimotor abilities, but it remains elusive whether age-related changes are due to accumulating degenerational processes, rendering them largely irreversible, or whether they reflect plastic, adaptational and presumably compensatory changes. Using aged rats as a model we studied how aging affects neural processing in somatosensory cortex. By multi-unit recordings in the fore- and hindpaw cortical maps we compared the effects of aging on receptive field size and response latencies. While in aged animals response latencies of neurons of both cortical representations were lengthened by approximately the same amount, only RFs of hindpaw neurons showed severe expansion with only little changes of forepaw RFs. To obtain insight into parallel changes of walking behavior, we recorded footprints in young and old animals which revealed a general age-related impairment of walking. In addition we found evidence for a limb-specific deterioration of the hindlimbs that was not observed in the forelimbs. Our results show that age-related changes of somatosensory cortical neurons display a complex pattern of regional specificity and parameter-dependence indicating that aging acts rather selectively on cortical processing of sensory information. The fact that RFs of the fore- and hindpaws do not co-vary in aged animals argues against degenerational processes on a global scale. We therefore conclude that age-related alterations are composed of plastic-adaptive alterations in response to modified use and degenerational changes developing with age. As a consequence, age-related changes need not be irreversible but can be subject to amelioration through training and stimulation. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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