Thalamic control of sensory selection in divided attention.
Thalamic control of sensory selection in divided attention.
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DOI：
10.1038/nature15398
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发表时间：
2015-10-29
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Halassa MM
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Wimmer RD;Schmitt LI;Davidson TJ;Nakajima M;Deisseroth K;Halassa MM
大脑如何选择适当的感觉输入并抑制分心因素，是神经科学中一个中心未解之谜。鉴于前额叶皮质(PFC)在执行功能中的作用已被证实，它在注意过程中与感觉皮质区的相互作用被假设为控制感觉选择。为了测试这一想法，并更广泛地剖析感觉选择背后的电路，我们在小鼠身上开发了一种跨模式的注意力分离任务，使基因能够进入这一认知过程。通过在时间上精确的窗口中通过光遗传干扰PFC功能，小鼠在相互冲突的视觉和听觉刺激之间适当选择的能力被削弱。令人惊讶的是，同等的感觉丘脑-皮质操作表明，行为依赖于PFC与感觉丘脑的相互作用，而不是皮质。与这一概念一致，我们发现视觉丘脑网状核(VisTRN)神经元在预测所选模式的放电频率方面表现出依赖于PFC的变化。通过子网络特定的双向光遗传操作证实，visTRN活性是性能的因果关系。通过电生理学和细胞内氯离子光度法的结合，我们证明了visTRN通过前馈抑制来动态地控制视觉丘脑的获得。结合起来，我们的实验引入了一种新的皮质下感觉选择模型，其中前额叶皮质偏向丘脑网状子网络来控制丘脑感觉获得，为进一步处理选择适当的输入。
How the brain selects appropriate sensory inputs and suppresses distractors is a central unsolved mystery in neuroscience. Given the well-established role of prefrontal cortex (PFC) in executive function, its interactions with sensory cortical areas during attention have been hypothesized to control sensory selection. To test this idea and more generally dissect the circuits underlying sensory selection, we developed a cross-modal divided attention task in mice enabling genetic access to this cognitive process. By optogenetically perturbing PFC function in a temporally-precise window, the ability of mice to appropriately select between conflicting visual and auditory stimuli was diminished. Surprisingly, equivalent sensory thalamo-cortical manipulations showed that behavior was causally dependent on PFC interactions with sensory thalamus, not cortex. Consistent with this notion, we found neurons of the visual thalamic reticular nucleus (visTRN) to exhibit PFC-dependent changes in firing rate predictive of the modality selected. visTRN activity was causal to performance as confirmed via subnetwork-specific bi-directional optogenetic manipulations. Through a combination of electrophysiology and intracellular chloride photometry, we demonstrated that visTRN dynamically controls visual thalamic gain through feedforward inhibition. Combined, our experiments introduce a new subcortical model of sensory selection, where prefrontal cortex biases thalamic reticular subnetworks to control thalamic sensory gain, selecting appropriate inputs for further processing.