The role of cortical interneurons in auditory processing and learning

项目摘要 听觉感知依赖于我们区分不同声音光谱内容的能力，以及学习的能力 利用这种差异来区分与行为相关的声音(如危险和安全)。初级阶段 听觉皮质(A1)已被证明在频率辨别和 听觉辨别性情绪学习。然而，尽管几十年的研究仔细绘制了 A1区神经元的听觉反应特性，构成这种调制的神经元回路是 目前尚不清楚。该提案的目的是测试这种候选神经元回路的作用。在这件事上 建议，我们测试假设，最常见的一类中间神经元，小白蛋白-的活动- 正向(PV)，调节A1区兴奋性神经元对不同频率的音调的选择性，而PV 活动对频率辨别和辨别听觉准确度的行为表现有影响 情绪化学习。为了测量PV活性的影响，我们选择性地激活或抑制PV中间神经元，并 利用最近开发的光遗传系统，在清醒行为的小鼠身上进行时间上的精确定位，并比较 静脉曲张激活或失活至基线状态时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.