Role of Sensory Experience in Parcellation of Sensory Neocortex

我的实验的主要目标是确定哺乳动物大脑皮层的不同区域是如何变得专门化以处理不同类型的感觉信息的，特别是，功能专门化的大脑回路是如何从非专门化的脑组织在发育过程中产生的。 我正在测试的假设是，在发育过程中接受的感觉输入在组织皮层的特定回路中起着关键作用。 为此，我使用了三组动物;一组是正常动物，一组是听觉皮层（AI）的感觉输入被移除（重新连接），另一组是在发育早期将视觉输入单方面转移到听觉通路（重新连接）。 我们已经证明，视觉输入可以由听觉皮层处理，如果他们从早期的发展，我们的目标是确定听觉皮层回路的变化是负责获得功能。这项工作的意义在于，它为哺乳动物大脑进化提供了一个独特的有价值的发育模型。 在进化过程中，新皮层变得越来越细分，输入处理越来越专业化。 通过我们的模型，我们可以在实验可管理的时间尺度上创建一个新的皮层区域或对现有皮层区域的新输入。 此外，这项工作还涉及动物大脑在进化和发育时间尺度上适应环境的基本机制。

The broad goal of my experiments is to determine how different areas of mammalian cerebral cortex become specialized to process different types of sensory information, and in particular, how functionally specialized brain circuitry is created during development from non specialized brain tissue. The hypothesis I am testing is that the sensory inputs received during development play a critical role in organizing specific circuits in cortex. To this end, I use three groups of animals; one group of normal animals, one which has had sensory input to auditory cortex (AI) removed (deafened), and another which has had visual input unilaterally diverted into the auditory pathway early in development ("rewired"). We have demonstrated that visual inputs can be processed by auditory cortex if they are present from early in development, and our goal is to determine what changes in auditory cortical circuitry are responsible for the gain of function. The implications of this work are that it provides a uniquely valuable developmental model for mammalian brain evolution. During evolution, neocortex becomes increasingly subdivided, and input processing is increasingly specialized. With our model, we can create a new cortical area or a new input to an existing cortical area on an experimentally-manageable time scale. In addition, the work addresses the basic mechanisms by which an animal's brain becomes adapted to its environment on both an evolutionary and a developmental time scale.