Tauste Campo Adrià, Zainos Antonio, Vázquez Yuriria, Adell Segarra Raul, Álvarez Manuel, Deco Gustavo, Díaz Héctor, Parra Sergio, Romo Ranulfo, Rossi-Pool Román
Computational Biology and Complex Systems group, Department of Physics, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Avinguda Dr. Marañón, 44-50, 08028 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
Instituto de Fisiología Celular-Neurociencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City 04510, Mexico.
iScience. 2024 May 23;27(7):110065. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.110065. eCollection 2024 Jul 19.
The brain is organized hierarchically to process sensory signals. But, how do functional connections within and across areas contribute to this hierarchical order? We addressed this problem in the thalamocortical network, while monkeys detected vibrotactile stimulus. During this task, we quantified neural variability and directed functional connectivity in simultaneously recorded neurons sharing the cutaneous receptive field within and across VPL and areas 3b and 1. Before stimulus onset, VPL and area 3b exhibited similar fast dynamics while area 1 showed slower timescales. During the stimulus presence, inter-trial neural variability increased along the network VPL-3b-1 while VPL established two main feedforward pathways with areas 3b and 1 to process the stimulus. This lower variability of VPL and area 3b was found to regulate feedforward thalamocortical pathways. Instead, intra-cortical interactions were only anticipated by higher intrinsic timescales in area 1. Overall, our results provide evidence of hierarchical functional roles along the thalamocortical network.
大脑以分层方式组织以处理感觉信号。但是，区域内和区域间的功能连接如何促成这种分层顺序呢？我们在丘脑皮质网络中解决了这个问题，同时让猴子检测振动触觉刺激。在这个任务过程中，我们对在VPL以及3b区和1区内和跨区共享皮肤感受野的同时记录的神经元中的神经变异性和定向功能连接进行了量化。在刺激开始前，VPL和3b区表现出相似的快速动态，而1区表现出较慢的时间尺度。在刺激出现期间，试验间神经变异性沿着网络VPL - 3b - 1增加，而VPL与3b区和1区建立了两条主要的前馈通路来处理刺激。发现VPL和3b区这种较低的变异性调节前馈丘脑皮质通路。相反，皮质内相互作用仅在1区较高的固有时间尺度上被预期。总体而言，我们的结果提供了沿丘脑皮质网络分层功能作用的证据。
