SSA: Memories of touch: The role of higher order cortical areas in processing and remembering tactile textures.

SSA：触摸记忆：高阶皮质区域在处理和记忆触觉纹理中的作用。

• 批准号: 2598352
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2598352
• 关键词: SSA; Memories; touch; role; higher

Humans mainly use the visual system to understand and interpret the world, making it difficult for us to imagine theworld of touch in any detail or understand its importance. Yet if we were unable to recognise objects from the waythey feel, we would then most likely realise the wealth of information yielded up by this vital sense. This studentshipproject is aimed at understanding how texture information is processed in the brain and how the brain adapts andlearns to attribute meaning to particular textures. To do this we will study texture processing in the rodent brain.Rodents are nocturnal animals and are therefore highly reliant on tactile information for identifying objects in theirenvironment. Rodents are experts at touch. In laboratory tasks, we have found that they preferentially use theirwhiskers to identify different textures. Remarkably, they are able to distinguish between surfaces that differ in particlesize by just 18um, a distance that is orders of magnitude smaller than the spacing between whiskers on the face.Building on the findings of an earlier BBSRC PhD studentship (Pacchiarin et al. 2017; 2020), we propose to extend ourinvestigation of how higher order somatosensory processing occurs in the cerebral cortex. We have established thatprimary somatosensory cortex (SI) is necessary for texture discrimination in freely moving mice by using chemo-genetic methods to inactivate temporarily SI during a whisker-dependent discrimination. Furthermore, using in vivo2-photon microscopy of dendritic spines, we have found that SI neurones undergo structural synaptic plasticity duringtexture discrimination, if and only if the mice learn the discrimination. The next step is to determine how textureinformation processing proceeds from SI to the hippocampus via the hypothesised ventral stream pathway. We willinitially study SII, which is strongly connected to SI, projects ventrally to Perirhinal cortex, and responds to tactiletextures. We will inactivate SII during the learning task using DREADDs and measure whether the mice still learn thetexture discrimination. These studies will lead to an understanding of how tactile sensory experience can be stored asmemories that are used to direct future choices.

人类主要利用视觉系统来理解和解释世界，这使得我们很难想象触摸世界的任何细节或理解其重要性。然而，如果我们不能从物体的感觉方式来识别它们，那么我们很可能会意识到这种重要的感觉所产生的丰富信息。这个学生项目旨在了解纹理信息是如何在大脑中处理的，以及大脑如何适应和学习将意义归因于特定的纹理。为此，我们将研究啮齿类动物大脑中的纹理处理。啮齿类动物是夜行性动物，因此高度依赖触觉信息来识别视觉中的物体。啮齿动物是触觉专家。在实验室任务中，我们发现它们优先使用它们的胡须来识别不同的纹理。值得注意的是，它们能够区分颗粒大小相差仅18 um的表面，这个距离比面部胡须之间的间距小几个数量级。基于早期BBSRC博士研究生的发现（Pacchiarin et al. 2017; 2020），我们建议扩展我们对大脑皮层中高阶体感处理如何发生的研究。我们已经建立了初级躯体感觉皮层（SI）是必要的纹理歧视在自由移动的小鼠，通过使用化学遗传学方法暂时取消SI在胡须依赖的歧视。此外，使用在体2-光子显微镜的树突棘，我们发现，SI神经元经历结构突触可塑性在纹理的歧视，当且仅当小鼠学习的歧视。下一步是确定纹理信息处理如何通过假设的腹侧流通路从SI到海马体进行。我们将研究SII，它与SI密切相关，向腹侧投射到嗅周皮层，并对触觉作出反应。我们将在学习任务中使用DREADD来测试SII，并测量小鼠是否仍然学习纹理辨别。这些研究将有助于理解触觉体验是如何作为记忆存储的，并用于指导未来的选择。