Sensory computations in the cuneate nucleus of macaques
| Autor: | Lee E. Miller, Qinpu He, Joshua M. Rosenow, Sliman J. Bensmaia, Charles M. Greenspon, Aneesha K. Suresh |
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| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Male
media_common.quotation_subject Thalamus Action Potentials neural coding integration Sensory system Stimulus (physiology) Somatosensory system Vibration Nerve Fibers Complex response touch Cortex (anatomy) medicine Animals Contrast (vision) receptive fields Skin media_common Neurons Physics Medulla Oblongata Multidisciplinary Biological Sciences medicine.anatomical_structure Touch Perception Receptive field Macaca Female Perception Cuneate nucleus Neural coding Mechanoreceptors Neuroscience |
| Zdroj: | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
| DOI: | 10.1101/2021.07.28.454185 |
| Popis: | Significance Perception is the outcome of the sequential processing of sensory signals at multiple stages along the neuraxis. The conventional view is that tactile signals are processed predominantly in the cerebral cortex. We tested this view by investigating the response properties of neurons in the cuneate nucleus (CN), the first potential stage of processing along the primary touch neuraxis. We found that CN responses more closely resemble those of cortical neurons than they do those of nerve fibers: CN neurons have spatially complex receptive fields reflecting convergent input from multiple classes of nerve fibers and exhibit a selectivity for object features, absent in the nerve. We conclude that the CN plays a key, early role in the processing of tactile information. Tactile nerve fibers fall into a few classes that can be readily distinguished based on their spatiotemporal response properties. Because nerve fibers reflect local skin deformations, they individually carry ambiguous signals about object features. In contrast, cortical neurons exhibit heterogeneous response properties that reflect computations applied to convergent input from multiple classes of afferents, which confer to them a selectivity for behaviorally relevant features of objects. The conventional view is that these complex response properties arise within the cortex itself, implying that sensory signals are not processed to any significant extent in the two intervening structures—the cuneate nucleus (CN) and the thalamus. To test this hypothesis, we recorded the responses evoked in the CN to a battery of stimuli that have been extensively used to characterize tactile coding in both the periphery and cortex, including skin indentations, vibrations, random dot patterns, and scanned edges. We found that CN responses are more similar to their cortical counterparts than they are to their inputs: CN neurons receive input from multiple classes of nerve fibers, they have spatially complex receptive fields, and they exhibit selectivity for object features. Contrary to consensus, then, the CN plays a key role in processing tactile information. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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