Englund Mackenzie, Faridjoo Samaan, Iyer Christopher S, Krubitzer Leah
Department of Psychology, University of California, 135 Young Hall, 1 Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California, 149 Briggs Hall, 1 Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
iScience. 2020 Sep 3;23(9):101527. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2020.101527. eCollection 2020 Sep 25.
The early loss of vision results in a reorganized neocortex, affecting areas of the brain that process both the spared and lost senses, and leads to heightened abilities on discrimination tasks involving the spared senses. Here, we used performance measures and machine learning algorithms that quantify behavioral strategy to determine if and how early vision loss alters adaptive sensorimotor behavior. We tested opossums on a motor task involving somatosensation and found that early blind animals had increased limb placement accuracy compared with sighted controls, while showing similarities in crossing strategy. However, increased reliance on tactile inputs in early blind animals resulted in greater deficits in limb placement and behavioral flexibility when the whiskers were trimmed. These data show that compensatory cross-modal plasticity extends beyond sensory discrimination tasks to motor tasks involving the spared senses and highlights the importance of whiskers in guiding forelimb control.
早期失明会导致新皮层重组，影响大脑中处理留存和丧失感觉的区域，并导致在涉及留存感觉的辨别任务中能力增强。在此，我们使用了量化行为策略的性能指标和机器学习算法，以确定早期失明是否以及如何改变适应性感觉运动行为。我们在一项涉及躯体感觉的运动任务中对负鼠进行了测试，发现早期失明的动物与有视力的对照组相比，肢体放置准确性有所提高，同时在交叉策略上表现出相似性。然而，早期失明动物对触觉输入的依赖性增加，导致在修剪胡须时肢体放置和行为灵活性方面出现更大的缺陷。这些数据表明，代偿性跨模态可塑性不仅扩展到感觉辨别任务，还扩展到涉及留存感觉的运动任务，并突出了胡须在引导前肢控制中的重要性。
