Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Otfried-Müller-Strasse 25, 72076 Tübingen, Germany; Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Otfried-Müller-Strasse 27, 72076 Tübingen, Germany; MEG Center, University of Tübingen, Otfried-Müller-Strasse 47, 72076 Tübingen, Germany; IMPRS for Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Österbergstrasse 3, 72074 Tübingen, Germany.
Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Otfried-Müller-Strasse 25, 72076 Tübingen, Germany; Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Otfried-Müller-Strasse 27, 72076 Tübingen, Germany; MEG Center, University of Tübingen, Otfried-Müller-Strasse 47, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Curr Biol. 2019 Sep 23;29(18):2973-2982.e5. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.07.051. Epub 2019 Aug 22.
Understanding the function of different neuronal cell types is key to understanding brain function. However, cell-type diversity is typically overlooked in electrophysiological studies in awake behaving animals. Here, we show that four functionally distinct cell classes can be robustly identified from extracellular recordings in several cortical regions of awake behaving monkeys. We recorded extracellular spiking activity from dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), the frontal eye field (FEF), and the lateral intraparietal area of macaque monkeys during a visuomotor decision-making task. We employed unsupervised clustering of spike waveforms, which robustly dissociated four distinct cell classes across all three brain regions. The four cell classes were functionally distinct. They showed different baseline firing statistics, visual response dynamics, and coding of visual information. Although cell-class-specific baseline statistics were consistent across brain regions, response dynamics and information coding were regionally specific. Our results identify four functionally distinct spike-waveform-based cell classes in primate cortex. This opens a new window to dissect and study the cell-type-specific function of cortical circuits.
理解不同神经元细胞类型的功能是理解大脑功能的关键。然而，在清醒动物的电生理研究中，通常会忽略细胞类型的多样性。在这里，我们展示了可以从清醒活动猴子的几个皮质区域的细胞外记录中可靠地识别出四种功能不同的细胞类型。我们在猴子进行视觉运动决策任务期间，从背外侧前额叶皮层（dlPFC）、额眼场（FEF）和外侧顶内区域记录细胞外尖峰活动。我们采用尖峰波形的无监督聚类，在所有三个脑区都可靠地区分出四种不同的细胞类型。这四种细胞类型在功能上是不同的。它们表现出不同的基线发放统计、视觉反应动力学和视觉信息编码。尽管细胞类型特异性的基线统计在脑区之间是一致的，但反应动力学和信息编码是区域特异性的。我们的研究结果在灵长类动物皮层中确定了四种具有不同功能的基于尖峰波形的细胞类型。这为剖析和研究皮质回路的细胞类型特异性功能开辟了新的窗口。
