Chemosensory Processing in Chemical Communication

描述（由申请人提供）：化学通讯是大多数哺乳动物与同类之间的主要通讯手段。即使是人类也表现出了一种重要的（虽然很大程度上是潜意识的）化学感觉交流形式，比如同居的女性会影响彼此的月经周期。无论是啮齿类动物还是人类，杏仁核都是一个主要的大脑区域，参与评估各种感觉/社会信息。它参与人类面部表情的识别和分类，这是自闭症谱系障碍和相关疾病所缺乏的过程。内侧杏仁核在处理和分类非学习化学感觉信号的信息方面尤为重要。我们和其他人已经在不同动物模型的内侧杏仁核中发现了区分化学感觉信息类别的回路，这些回路与在各种物种中用于分析其他感觉信号的其他杏仁核分支的回路具有共同的关键特征。在这里，我们研究了这些回路的激活，在行为动物的大脑细胞水平上，以测试关于杏仁核回路在区分非学习信息素样化学信号的操作原理的其他假设。杏仁核也参与根据经验重新分配化学感觉刺激的价值。在这里，我们将通过条件反射来修改行为动物的化学感觉刺激的意义，并确定信息是否被重新路由到新的输出回路，以及非条件刺激的分类是否被维持、改变或不存在。即时早期基因表达将用于绘制细胞水平（随时间平均）的大脑反应，单神经元电生理学将用于测量对多种刺激的反应（在更高的时间分辨率下），以识别和表征所涉及的神经元。神经回路内神经元之间的功能连接将通过神经连接的解剖追踪来确定。杏仁核的功能在感觉加工和重新分配显著性的感觉刺激作为经验的结果将在本研究中进行调查。这些过程可能与自闭症或其他感官评估、情感和沟通障碍有关。相关研究调查了杏仁核内回路的运作，杏仁核是哺乳动物大脑中与自闭症谱系障碍和相关疾病有关的区域。啮齿动物的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的感觉刺激的电路有共同的特点。

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.