UC Riverside mouse research study reveals where in the brain sensory input is changed to motion.
When we step on the automobile brake upon seeing a red traffic signal ahead, a series of occasions unfolds in the brain at warp speed.
The picture of the traffic signal is moved from our eyes to the visual cortex, which, in turn, interacts to the premotor cortex — an area of the brain associated with preparing and performing limb motions. A signal is then sent out to our foot to step on the brake. However, the brain area that assists the body go from “seeing” to “stepping” is still a secret, aggravating neuroscientists and psychologists.
To unload this “black box,” a group of neuroscientists at the University of California, Riverside, has actually explored on mice to recognize the brain area that works beyond sensory encoding and motor encoding, possibly opening brand-new instructions to studying the cellular and circuit systems of sensory-motor changes. The scientists report a cortical area typically specified as hair motor cortex in mice is most straight associated to the change procedure.
In the laboratory, the scientists qualified mice to pick up a small deflection on one side of their hairs, and report if they noticed it by licking a water port.
“We recorded the neuronal activity of some brain regions that might convey this sensory-motor transformation by using the ‘language of neurons’ — the electrical signals — generated as the mouse performs the task of stimulus detection,” stated Zhaoran Zhang, a college student in the Neuroscience Graduate Program and a co-first author of the term paper released in eNeuro, an open-access journal of the Society of Neuroscience.
Behzad Zareian, a college student in the Department of Psychology and a co-first author of the term paper, discussed the group utilized easy however user-friendly mathematical tools to change the nerve cells’ electrical activities to numbers that explain just how much the nerve cells pick up the sensory input, just how much they show the upcoming motion outputs, and how well they anticipate whether the sensory info can be effectively changed to an appropriate habits.
Zoom image reveals, from L to R, Behzad Zareian, Edward Zagha, and Zhaoran Zhang. Credit: Zagha laboratory, UC Riverside
“We located a brain region traditionally defined as the whisker motor cortex, which was previously believed to influence how a mouse moves its whiskers,” Zareian stated, “We found this cortical region is capable of transforming the sensory input from whisker deflection to a more general movement action — licking in this case — rather than just moving whiskers.”
Corresponding author Edward Zagha, an assistant teacher of psychology and the group’s concept private investigator, discussed that a person problem in discovering brain areas running the sensory-motor change is that although researchers can determine the sensory- and motor-related brain activities quickly in the laboratory, the inner procedure that performs the sensory-motor change in the brain is evasive and difficult to measure.
“Our brain represents sensory and motor information in more than one place and often in a redundant manner for multiple purposes such as fine-tuning future movements, enhancing perception or memory storage,” Zagha stated. “Thus, scientists are now able to distinguish the location of transformation and the regions that merely reflect the sensory or motor information for other purposes. This can vastly improve the use of targeted therapy for patients with sensory- and motor-related brain deficits.”
Next, the group prepares to focus its research study on hair motor cortex to reveal what takes place within this area to make it possible for the change procedure.
“Interestingly, each cortical region consists of multiple layers and multiple subtype of neurons such as excitatory and inhibitory neurons that are subject to research,” Zagha stated. “Thus, this expands our knowledge of the neurobiological circuits performing sensory-motor transformations and identifies sites of potential therapeutic intervention to modulate these brain functions.”
Reference: “Cortical Localization of the Sensory-Motor Transformation in a Whisker Detection Task in Mice” by Behzad Zareian, Zhaoran Zhang and Edward Zagha, 25 January 2021, eNeuro.
DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0004-21.2021
The research study was moneyed by grants from the Whitehall Foundation and National Institutes of Health.
