Lehrstuhl für Zellphysiologie, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany.
PLoS One. 2011;6(10):e26158. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0026158. Epub 2011 Oct 19.
Mammalian nasal chemosensation is predominantly mediated by two independent neuronal pathways, the olfactory and the trigeminal system. Within the early olfactory system, spatiotemporal responses of the olfactory bulb to various odorants have been mapped in great detail. In contrast, far less is known about the representation of volatile chemical stimuli at an early stage in the trigeminal system, the trigeminal ganglion (TG), which contains neurons directly projecting to the nasal cavity. We have established an in vivo preparation that allows high-resolution imaging of neuronal population activity from a large region of the rat TG using voltage-sensitive dyes (VSDs). Application of different chemical stimuli to the nasal cavity elicited distinct, stimulus-category specific, spatiotemporal activation patterns that comprised activated as well as suppressed areas. Thus, our results provide the first direct insights into the spatial representation of nasal chemosensory information within the trigeminal ganglion imaged at high temporal resolution.
哺乳动物的鼻腔化学感觉主要由两条独立的神经元通路介导，即嗅觉和三叉神经系统。在早期的嗅觉系统中，嗅球对各种气味的时空反应已经被详细地绘制出来。相比之下，对于挥发性化学刺激物在三叉神经系统的早期阶段（三叉神经节，TG）的表示，人们知之甚少，TG 包含直接投射到鼻腔的神经元。我们建立了一种体内准备，使用电压敏感染料（VSD）允许从大鼠 TG 的大区域进行高分辨率的神经元群体活动成像。将不同的化学刺激物应用于鼻腔会引起不同的、刺激类别特异性的时空激活模式，包括激活区和抑制区。因此，我们的结果首次直接洞察了在高时间分辨率下成像的三叉神经节中鼻腔化学感觉信息的空间表示。
