Chemosensory Processing in Chemical Communication

描述(申请人提供)：在大多数哺乳动物中，化学交流是与其他同类动物交流的主要方式。甚至人类也表现出一种重要的，如果主要是潜意识的，化学感觉交流的形式，当女性生活在一起影响彼此的月经周期时。杏仁核是一个主要的大脑区域，参与评估所有种类的感觉/社会信息，无论是在啮齿动物身上还是在人类身上。它参与人类面部表情的识别和分类，这是一个在自闭症谱系障碍和相关疾病中缺失的过程。杏仁内侧核在处理和分类有关未学习的化学感觉信号的信息时特别重要。我们和其他人已经在不同动物模型的杏仁内侧核中识别出区分化学感觉信息类别的电路，这些电路与其他杏仁核部门分析各种物种其他感觉信号的电路有关键特征。在这里，我们研究这些电路的激活，在大脑细胞水平上的行为动物，以测试关于杏仁核电路在区分未学习的信息素样化学信号的工作原理的替代假设。杏仁核还参与根据经验将价值重新分配给化学感觉刺激，在这里，我们将通过条件反射修改行为动物化学感觉刺激的含义，并确定信息是否被重新路由以参与新的输出回路，以及无条件刺激的分类是否保持、改变或缺失。即刻早期基因表达将被用来绘制细胞水平的大脑反应图(随着时间的平均)，单个神经元电生理学将被用来测量对多种刺激的反应(以更高的时间分辨率)，以识别和描述所涉及的神经元。电路内神经元之间的功能连接将通过对神经连接的解剖追踪来确定。本研究将探讨杏仁核在感觉加工过程中的功能，以及作为经验的结果而将突起重新分配给感觉刺激的功能。这些过程可能与自闭症或其他感觉评估、情感和沟通障碍有关。相关研究调查了杏仁核内电路的运作，杏仁核是哺乳动物大脑中的一个区域，与自闭症谱系障碍和相关疾病有关。啮齿动物杏仁核使用电路来分析和分类化学感觉信号，这些信号与其他物种用来分析和分类其他类型感觉刺激的电路具有共同特征。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Chemical communication is the primary means of communication with others of the same species in most mammals. Even humans show a significant, if largely subliminal, form of chemosensory communication, as when women living together influence each others' menstrual cycle. The amygdala is a primary brain area involved in evaluating sensory/social information of all kinds, in rodents and in humans. It is involved in the recognition and categorization of facial expression in humans, a process that is deficient in autism spectrum disorder and related conditions. The medial amygdala is particularly important in processing and categorizing information about unlearned chemosensory signals. We and others have identified circuits in medial amygdala of different animal models that distinguish categories of chemosensory information and these circuits share critical features with circuits used by other amygdala divisions analyzing other sensory signals in a variety of species. Here we investigate the activation of these circuits, in behaving animals at the cellular level in the brain, to test alternative hypotheses about the principles of operation of amygdala circuits in discriminating unlearned pheromone-like chemosignals. The amygdala is also involved in reassigning value to chemosensory stimuli based on experience, Here we will modify the meaning of chemosensory stimuli in behaving animals, by conditioning and determine whether information is re-routed to engage a new output circuit, and whether categorization seen with unconditioned stimuli is maintained, altered or absent. Immediate-early gene expression will be used to map brain responses at the cellular level (averaged over time) and single-neuron electrophysiology will be used to measure responses to multiple stimuli (at higher temporal resolution), in order to identify and characterize the neurons involved. The functional connections between sets of neurons within the circuit will be determined by anatomical tracing of neural connections. The function of the amygdala in sensory processing and in reassigning salience to sensory stimuli as a result of experience will be investigated in this study. These processes may be involved in autism or other disorders of sensory evaluation, affect and communication. Relevance the research investigates the operation of circuits within the amygdala, a region in the mammalian brain implicated in autism spectrum disorder and related conditions. The rodent amygdala uses circuits to analyze and classify chemosensory signals that have common features with circuits used by other species to analyze and classify other types of sensory stimuli.