Stenner Max-Philipp, Nossa Cindy Márquez, Zaehle Tino, Azañón Elena, Heinze Hans-Jochen, Deliano Matthias, Büntjen Lars
Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany.
Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany.
Sci Adv. 2025 Jan 17;11(3):eadl5602. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adl5602. Epub 2025 Jan 15.
Prior knowledge changes how the brain processes sensory input. Whether knowledge influences initial sensory processing upstream of the brain, in the spinal cord, is unknown. Studying electric potentials recorded invasively and noninvasively from the human spinal cord at millisecond resolution, we find that the cord generates electric potentials at 600 hertz that are modulated by prior knowledge about the time of sensory input, as early as 13 to 16 milliseconds after stimulation. Our results reveal that already in the spinal cord, sensory processing is under top-down, cognitive control, and that 600-hertz signals, which have been identified as a macroscopic marker of population spiking in other regions of the nervous system, play a role in early, context-dependent sensory processing. The possibility to examine these signals noninvasively in humans opens up avenues for research into the physiology of the spinal cord and its interaction with the brain.
先验知识会改变大脑处理感觉输入的方式。知识是否会影响大脑上游脊髓中的初始感觉处理尚不清楚。通过以毫秒分辨率对人类脊髓进行侵入性和非侵入性记录的电位研究，我们发现脊髓会在600赫兹产生电位，这些电位早在刺激后13至16毫秒就受到关于感觉输入时间的先验知识的调制。我们的结果表明，早在脊髓中，感觉处理就受到自上而下的认知控制，并且600赫兹信号（已被确定为神经系统其他区域群体放电的宏观标记）在早期、依赖上下文的感觉处理中发挥作用。在人类中进行非侵入性检测这些信号的可能性为脊髓生理学及其与大脑相互作用的研究开辟了道路。
