Institute of Neurobiology, University of Puerto Rico-Medical Sciences Campus, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Neuroscience Program, Carleton College, Northfield, United States.
Elife. 2024 Apr 18;12:RP87602. doi: 10.7554/eLife.87602.
Mechanosensory neurons located across the body surface respond to tactile stimuli and elicit diverse behavioral responses, from relatively simple stimulus location-aimed movements to complex movement sequences. How mechanosensory neurons and their postsynaptic circuits influence such diverse behaviors remains unclear. We previously discovered that perform a body location-prioritized grooming sequence when mechanosensory neurons at different locations on the head and body are simultaneously stimulated by dust (Hampel et al., 2017; Seeds et al., 2014). Here, we identify nearly all mechanosensory neurons on the head that individually elicit aimed grooming of specific head locations, while collectively eliciting a whole head grooming sequence. Different tracing methods were used to reconstruct the projections of these neurons from different locations on the head to their distinct arborizations in the brain. This provides the first synaptic resolution somatotopic map of a head, and defines the parallel-projecting mechanosensory pathways that elicit head grooming.
分布于体表的机械感觉神经元对触觉刺激做出反应，并引发各种行为反应，从相对简单的刺激定位导向运动到复杂的运动序列。机械感觉神经元及其突触后回路如何影响如此多样化的行为尚不清楚。我们之前发现，当头部和身体不同位置的机械感觉神经元同时受到灰尘刺激时，会优先进行身体部位的梳理（Hampel 等人，2017 年；Seeds 等人，2014 年）。在这里，我们确定了头部几乎所有的机械感觉神经元，它们单独引发针对特定头部位置的有针对性的梳理，而集体引发整个头部梳理序列。使用不同的追踪方法来重建这些神经元从头部不同位置到其在大脑中的特定分支的投射。这提供了第一个头部的突触分辨率躯体图，并定义了引发头部梳理的平行投射机械感觉通路。
