Yamawaki Naoki, Shepherd Gordon M G
Department of Physiology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois 60611.
Department of Physiology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois 60611
J Neurosci. 2015 Feb 4;35(5):2293-307. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4023-14.2015.
Corticothalamic (CT) neurons in layer 6 constitute a large but enigmatic class of cortical projection neurons. How they are integrated into intracortical and thalamo-cortico-thalamic circuits is incompletely understood, especially outside of sensory cortex. Here, we investigated CT circuits in mouse forelimb motor cortex (M1) using multiple circuit-analysis methods. Stimulating and recording from CT, intratelencephalic (IT), and pyramidal tract (PT) projection neurons, we found strong CT↔ CT and CT↔ IT connections; however, CT→IT connections were limited to IT neurons in layer 6, not 5B. There was strikingly little CT↔ PT excitatory connectivity. Disynaptic inhibition systematically accompanied excitation in these pathways, scaling with the amplitude of excitation according to both presynaptic (class-specific) and postsynaptic (cell-by-cell) factors. In particular, CT neurons evoked proportionally more inhibition relative to excitation (I/E ratio) than IT neurons. Furthermore, the amplitude of inhibition was tuned to match the amount of excitation at the level of individual neurons; in the extreme, neurons receiving no excitation received no inhibition either. Extending these studies to dissect the connectivity between cortex and thalamus, we found that M1-CT neurons and thalamocortical neurons in the ventrolateral (VL) nucleus were remarkably unconnected in either direction. Instead, VL axons in the cortex excited both IT and PT neurons, and CT axons in the thalamus excited other thalamic neurons, including those in the posterior nucleus, which additionally received PT excitation. These findings, which contrast in several ways with previous observations in sensory areas, illuminate the basic circuit organization of CT neurons within M1 and between M1 and thalamus.
第6层的皮质丘脑(CT)神经元构成了一大类数量众多但却神秘莫测的皮质投射神经元。它们是如何整合到皮质内以及丘脑 - 皮质 - 丘脑回路中的,目前还未完全清楚,尤其是在感觉皮层之外。在这里,我们使用多种回路分析方法研究了小鼠前肢运动皮层(M1)中的CT回路。通过刺激并记录CT、脑内(IT)和锥体束(PT)投射神经元,我们发现了强大的CT↔CT和CT↔IT连接;然而,CT→IT连接仅限于第6层而非第5B层的IT神经元。CT↔PT之间的兴奋性连接极少。在这些通路中,双突触抑制系统性地伴随着兴奋,根据突触前(类别特异性)和突触后(逐个细胞)因素,其与兴奋幅度成比例变化。特别是,相对于IT神经元,CT神经元诱发的抑制相对于兴奋的比例(抑制/兴奋比)更高。此外,抑制幅度经过调整,以在单个神经元水平上匹配兴奋量;在极端情况下,未接受兴奋的神经元也不会受到抑制。将这些研究扩展到剖析皮层与丘脑之间的连接性,我们发现腹外侧(VL)核中的M1 - CT神经元和丘脑皮质神经元在两个方向上的连接都非常少。相反,皮质中的VL轴突兴奋了IT和PT神经元,丘脑中的CT轴突兴奋了其他丘脑神经元,包括后核中的那些神经元,而后核中的神经元还额外接受了PT兴奋。这些发现在几个方面与之前在感觉区域的观察结果形成对比,阐明了M1内以及M1与丘脑之间CT神经元的基本回路组织。