Whisking: Development of an 'active touch' system

Whisking：“主动触摸”系统的开发

• 批准号: 6370364
• 负责人: Harris ZEIGLER
• 金额: $ 30万
• 依托单位: HUNTER COLLEGE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-09-01 至 2005-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6370364
• 关键词: animal developmental psychology; behavior test; behavioral /social science research tag; biological models; botulinum toxins; developmental neurobiology; form /pattern perception; laboratory rat; neural information processing; sensorimotor system; sensory cortex; sensory signal detection; space perception; stimulus /response; touch; vibrissae

Whisking: Development of an "active touch" system. A central goal of neuroscience is understanding sensorimotor integration-how the brain processes information and uses it to control movements. Much of this information is acquired actively, using "mobile sensors" such as the human fingers or the rodent whiskers, which scan the environment, transforming the spatial properties of objects into spatio-temporal patterns of neural activity. Such scanning patterns are among the most complex movements generated by the somatosensorimotor system. However, we have little information about how such patterns are acquired during development. We suggest that the normal development of "active touch" systems is contingent upon the occurrence, during development, of associations between the animal's own movements and the sensory inputs generated by those movements. We hypothesize that perinatal manipulations of such sensorimotor linkages will selectively impact upon behavioral tasks dependent on "active touch". To test the hypothesis we use rodent whisking as a model of "active touch". We use perinatal injections of Botulinum toxin to reversibly block afference generated by the animal's own whisking movements, leaving intact other sources of vibrissal afference (whisking deprivation). We use neonatal optic nerve section to increase dependence upon vibrissal inputs (whisking supplementation). In adult animals, we examine treatment effects upon a variety of vibrissa-mediated behaviors, and upon the receptive field organization of cortical vibrissal neurons. These studies should advance our understanding of processes mediating developmental plasticity in the somatosensorimotor system.

搅拌：一种“主动触摸”系统的开发。神经科学的一个中心目标是理解感觉运动整合——大脑如何处理信息并利用它来控制运动。这些信息大多是主动获取的，使用“移动传感器”，如人类的手指或啮齿动物的胡须，它们扫描环境，将物体的空间特性转化为神经活动的时空模式。这种扫描模式是由体感运动系统产生的最复杂的运动之一。然而，我们对这些模式是如何在开发过程中获得的信息知之甚少。我们认为，“主动触摸”系统的正常发育取决于动物自身运动与这些运动产生的感觉输入之间的联系在发育过程中的发生。我们假设这种感觉运动联系的围产期操作将选择性地影响依赖于“主动触摸”的行为任务。为了验证这一假设，我们使用啮齿动物的轻拂作为“主动触摸”的模型。我们使用围产期注射肉毒杆菌毒素可逆地阻断由动物自己的拍打运动产生的传入，留下完整的其他来源的振动传入（拍打剥夺）。我们使用新生儿视神经切片来增加对振动输入的依赖（whisking补充）。在成年动物中，我们研究了治疗对各种触电介导行为的影响，以及对皮质触电神经元的感受野组织的影响。这些研究将促进我们对躯体感觉运动系统中调节发育可塑性的过程的理解。