The role of cortical interneurons in auditory processing and learning

项目摘要 听觉依赖于我们区分不同声音的频谱内容的能力， 使用这种差异来区分行为相关的声音（例如危险和安全）。 主 听觉皮层（A1）已被证明在频率辨别中起重要的调节作用， 听觉辨别性情绪学习然而，尽管数十年的研究已经仔细绘制了 A1中神经元的听觉响应特性，这种调制的神经元回路是 目前未知。 该提案的目标是测试这种候选神经元回路的作用。 在这 建议，我们测试的假设，最常见的一类中间神经元，小白蛋白的活动- 阳性（PV），调节A1兴奋性神经元对不同频率音调的选择性，PV 活动影响频率辨别的行为表现和辨别听觉的精度 情感学习为了测量PV活性的效果，我们选择性地激活或抑制PV中间神经元， 时间上精确地使用最近开发的光遗传学系统，在清醒的行为小鼠中， 肺静脉激活或失活至基线状态期间的神经测量和行为表现。

Project Summary Hearing perception relies on our ability to tell apart the spectral content of different sounds, and to learn to use this difference to distinguish behaviorally relevant (such as dangerous and safe) sounds. The primary auditory cortex (A1) has been shown to play an important modulatory role in frequency discrimination and auditory discriminative emotional learning. However, despite decades of research that have carefully mapped the auditory response properties of neurons in A1, the neuronal circuits that underlie this modulation are currently unknown. The goal of the proposal is to test the role of such candidate neuronal circuit. In this proposal, we test the hypothesis that the activity of the most common class of interneurons, parvalbumin- positive (PVs), modulates selectivity to tones at different frequencies of excitatory neurons in A1, and that PV activity affects the behavioral performance in frequency discrimination and precision of discriminative auditory emotional learning. To measure the effect of PV activity we activate or inhibit PV interneurons selectively and temporally precisely using a recently developed optogenetic system, in awake behaving mice, and compare the neurometric and behavioral performance during activation or inactivation of PVs to baseline condition.