Huey Erica L, Turecek Josef, Delisle Michelle M, Mazor Ofer, Romero Gabriel E, Dua Malvika, Sarafis Zoe K, Hobble Alexis, Booth Kevin T, Goodrich Lisa V, Corey David P, Ginty David D
Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, 220 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, 220 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, 220 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Cell. 2025 Jan 9;188(1):104-120.e18. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.11.014. Epub 2024 Dec 18.
Vibrations are ubiquitous in nature, shaping behavior across the animal kingdom. For mammals, mechanical vibrations acting on the body are detected by mechanoreceptors of the skin and deep tissues and processed by the somatosensory system, while sound waves traveling through air are captured by the cochlea and encoded in the auditory system. Here, we report that mechanical vibrations detected by the body's Pacinian corpuscle neurons, which are distinguished by their ability to entrain to high-frequency (40-1,000 Hz) environmental vibrations, are prominently encoded by neurons in the lateral cortex of the inferior colliculus (LCIC) of the midbrain. Remarkably, most LCIC neurons receive convergent Pacinian and auditory input and respond more strongly to coincident tactile-auditory stimulation than to either modality alone. Moreover, the LCIC is required for behavioral responses to high-frequency mechanical vibrations. Thus, environmental vibrations captured by Pacinian corpuscles are encoded in the auditory midbrain to mediate behavior.
振动在自然界中无处不在，影响着整个动物界的行为。对于哺乳动物来说，作用于身体的机械振动由皮肤和深部组织的机械感受器检测，并由体感系统进行处理，而在空气中传播的声波则由耳蜗捕获并在听觉系统中编码。在这里，我们报告称，身体的帕西尼小体神经元检测到的机械振动，其特点是能够与高频（40-1000赫兹）环境振动同步，在中脑下丘外侧皮质（LCIC）的神经元中得到显著编码。值得注意的是，大多数LCIC神经元接受来自帕西尼小体和听觉的汇聚输入，并且对触觉-听觉同时刺激的反应比对单独任何一种刺激的反应都更强烈。此外，对高频机械振动的行为反应需要LCIC。因此，帕西尼小体捕获的环境振动在听觉中脑进行编码以介导行为。
