Functional Interactions in Sensory and Motor Systems.

感觉和运动系统的功能相互作用。

• 批准号: 250364-2013
• 负责人: Staines, Richard
• 金额: $ 2.4万
• 依托单位: University of Waterloo
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=594451
• 关键词: Functional; Interactions; Sensory; Motor; Systems.

In order to interact in our environment during everyday activities, the central nervous system must identify and extract relevant sensory information from a vast array of concurrent inputs from multiple sensory modalities. Such processing is essential for accurately controlling movements, learning novel motor skills leading to adaptation in motor regions of the brain and successfully relearning movement patterns following brain injury. Sensory inputs initially arrive and are processed at very distinct, modality specific areas of the cortex before being integrated in sensory association cortices. Previous research has provided detailed characterization and mechanistic information of how sensory inputs within a specific modality are represented during movement at a relatively early level. For example, our ongoing work suggests that selection of somatosensory information begins to occur at the earliest stage of cortical processing, the primary somatosensory cortex, during sensory-guided movement and perceptual discrimination. Highly selective mechanisms appear to be involved, including inhibition of ascending cortical paths carrying task-irrelevant information and facilitation of those carrying task-relevant information. The specific regions that control this selection are unclear, however interactions between the prefrontal cortex, thalamus, multimodal sensory regions and primary unimodal sensory cortices appear to play an important role. However, much less is known about how these mechanisms of control are altered when the central nervous system is presented with multiple sources of sensory inputs, as is usually the case during natural movement. Our current work suggests that the cortical representations of competitive visual and tactile input change substantially depending on the task-relevance of the stimuli and on the spatial and temporal relationship between visual and somatosensory information. As such the proposed research program will focus on developing fundamental understanding of the interactions and integration of sensory inputs from multiple modalities at a cortical level and the role this plays in the acquisition and control of normal limb movement and in promoting mechanisms involved in experience-dependent motor adaptations.

为了在日常活动中与我们的环境相互作用，中枢神经系统必须从来自多种感觉模式的大量并发输入中识别和提取相关感觉信息。这样的处理对于准确控制运动、学习新的运动技能导致大脑运动区域的适应以及成功地重新学习脑损伤后的运动模式是必不可少的。感觉输入最初到达，并在大脑皮层非常不同的通道特定区域进行处理，然后整合到感觉关联皮质中。以前的研究已经提供了关于特定通道中的感觉输入如何在相对较早的水平上在运动中被表征的详细的表征和机制信息。例如，我们正在进行的工作表明，体感信息的选择开始发生在皮层处理的最早阶段，即初级体感皮质，在感觉引导的运动和知觉辨别期间。高度选择性的机制似乎涉及到，包括抑制携带与任务无关的信息的皮层上升通路，以及促进携带与任务相关的信息的通路。控制这一选择的具体区域尚不清楚，但前额叶皮质、丘脑、多模式感觉区域和初级单峰感觉皮质之间的相互作用似乎发挥了重要作用。然而，当中枢神经系统被呈现给多种来源的感觉输入时，这些控制机制是如何改变的，我们知道的要少得多，这在自然运动中通常是这样的。我们目前的工作表明，竞争性视觉和触觉输入的大脑皮层表征基本上取决于刺激的任务相关性以及视觉和体感信息之间的空间和时间关系。因此，拟议的研究计划将侧重于在大脑皮层水平上发展对来自多种形式的感觉输入的相互作用和整合的基本了解，以及这在获得和控制正常肢体运动以及促进经验依赖型运动适应所涉及的机制方面所起的作用。