Effects of Reversible Deactivation of Posterior Parietal Cortex in New World Cebu

描述(申请人提供)：这些实验的第一个目标是描绘新大陆大头猴后顶叶皮质的大脑区域如何在皮层网络内运行，该网络对伸展、抓取和双手行为至关重要。第二个目标是通过引入一项新技术，扩大我们与巴西里约热内卢联邦大学生物研究所(IBCCF；Franca、Gattass、Fiorani和Soares博士)教职员工的持续合作，该技术是神经科学中心(Krubitzer)和加州大学戴维斯分校(UC Davis)生物医学工程系(Simon)实验室之间的联合项目。Cebus猴子和人类一样，有一个可对置的拇指，利用精确的握力，并从事各种复杂的手动行为。在野外和实验室环境中，它们对工具的使用使头猴成为了解人类复杂手动能力的神经基础的极好模型，比通常使用的猕猴更好，因为猕猴很少使用工具。这个国际联合体将向IBCCF引进的新技术是微流控冷却装置。这是一种留置和生物兼容的设备，可以选择性地和可逆地使清醒动物在执行训练任务时的一个或多个大脑区域失活。这相当于可逆地‘损毁’大脑区域，使我们能够通过检测来探测受影响区域的功能 在去激活过程中的特定行为缺陷。使用这个设备，我们可以比较相似之处 在东半球恒河猴和新大陆恒河猴之间的大脑皮层环路中，发现它们参与了协调手的使用，并确定了在恒河猴中与工具使用相关的环路的差异。这些研究具有重要的临床意义，因为它们将揭示失活区域的大小与行为障碍的程度和可能的康复之间的关系。该设备的应用模拟了校准的临床损伤，并提供了一种新的方法来评估逐渐增大的“损伤”的影响，例如在人类中风期间可能发生的损伤。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The first goal of these experiments is to delineate how brain areas in posterior parietal cortex of New World cebus monkeys operate within a cortical network that is critical for reaching, grasping and bimanual behaviors. The second goal is to extend our ongoing collaboration with faculty at the Instituto de Biofisica Carlos Chagas Filho (IBCCF; Drs. Franca, Gattass, Fiorani and Soares) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by introducing a new technology that was developed as a joint project between laboratories at the Center for Neuroscience (Krubitzer) and Department of Biomedical Engineering (Simon) at UC Davis. Cebus monkeys, like humans, have an opposable thumb, utilize a precision grip and engage in a variety of complex manual behaviors. Their use of tools in both the wild and laboratory settings make cebus monkeys an excellent model for understanding the neural basis of complex manual abilities in humans, more so than the commonly used macaque monkey, which rarely uses tools. The new technology that this international consortium will introduce to IBCCF is the microfluidic cooling device. This is an indwelling and biocompatible device that can selectively and reversibly deactivate one or more brain areas in awake animals performing a trained task. This is equivalent to reversibly 'lesioning' a brain area and will enable us to probe the function of the affected area by detection of specific deficits in behavior during deactivation. Using this device we can compare similarities in cortical circuits between Old World macaque monkeys and New World cebus monkeys that are involved in coordinated hand use, and define differences in circuits that have arisen in conjunction with tool use in cebus monkeys. These studies have important clinical relevance because they will reveal the relationship between the size of a deactivated area and the extent of behavioral dysfunction and recovery that is possible. Application of this device simulates a calibrated clinical lesion and provides a novel approach to assess the effects of progressively larger "lesions" such as can occur during stroke in humans.