The primary vibrissae motor cortex (vM1) is responsible for generating whisking movements. In parallel, vM1 also sends information directly to the sensory barrel cortex (vS1). In this study, we investigated the effects of vM1 activation on processing of vibrissae sensory information in vS1 of the rat. To dissociate the vibrissae sensory-motor loop, we optogenetically activated vM1 and independe...

INTRODUCTION AND METHODS. PKC family of enzymes typically activated by phospholipid hydrolysis and calcium consists of 12 isozymes that can be further categorized into conventional, novel and atypical PKCs. It has been widely accepted that Ca 2+ -dependent (conventional) PKCs play a major role in synaptic plasticity. Changes in PKC distribution may play an important role in associative memory s...

Neurons throughout the rat vibrissa somatosensory pathway are sensitive to the angular direction of whisker movement. Could this sensitivity help rats discriminate stimuli? Here we use a simple computational model of cortical neurons to analyze the robustness of directional selectivity. In the model, directional preference emerges from tuning of synaptic conductance amplitude and latency, as in...

review of the meeting according to the major themes that emerged from the presentations and discussions, Is There a Uniform Design to the Neocortex? The opening presentation (T. Woolsey, Washington University) underscored two basic themes of the meeting: (1) that commonalties among cortical circuits even in One of great mysteries in biology is the function of the cerebral cortex. The neocortex ...

review of the meeting according to the major themes that emerged from the presentations and discussions, Is There a Uniform Design to the Neocortex? The opening presentation (T. Woolsey, Washington University) underscored two basic themes of the meeting: (1) that commonalties among cortical circuits even in One of great mysteries in biology is the function of the cerebral cortex. The neocortex ...

Introduction: It is believed that Locus Coeruleus (LC) influences the sensory information processing. However, its role in cortical surround inhibitory mechanism is not understood. In this experiment, using controlled mechanical displacement of whiskers we investigated the effect of phasic electrical stimulation of LC on response of layer V barrel cortical neurons in anesthetized rat. Methods: ...

Introduction: Understanding and identifying the neuronal networks of the cerebral cortex, their temporal properties, their development and plasticity are the focus of many functional imaging studies both in humans and rodents (1). In the mouse, a noninvasive method to study functionally the neural network of the barrel cortex would open the possibility to investigate the neurophysiological mech...

Neural networks of the rodent barrel cortex are particularly tractable for developing a quantitative understanding of response transformations in a cortical column. A column in barrel cortex consists of approximately 10 compartments. Two thalamic input pathways, a sensory lemniscal one and sensorimotor paralemniscal one, are transformed to approximately 7 population outputs, each with distinct ...

Previous experimental studies of both cortical barrel and thalamic barreloid neuron responses in rodent somatosensory cortex have indicated an active role for barrel circuitry in processing thalamic signals. Previous modeling studies of the same system have suggested that a major function of the barrel circuit is to render the response magnitude of barrel neurons particularly sensitive to the t...