RUI: Adaptive integration of bilateral inputs to rat somatosensory cortex

大脑不同部位的感觉信号是如何结合在一起形成我们所经历的单一统一感知的？ 尽管在过去的世纪里，人们积累了大量关于大脑细胞组成的细节，但关于它们的活动是如何协调或整合的这个基本问题，在很大程度上仍然没有答案。 这里提出的实验将开始揭示老鼠触觉系统中的神经元是如何在黑暗中判断隧道开口的宽度时，联合收割机将来自脸部两侧长胡须的信号结合起来的。 方法是记录感觉神经元的电活动，而受过训练的大鼠报告它们是否用面部胡须感觉到宽或窄的开口。 选择性地关闭大脑一侧或另一侧的神经元（使用药物）将量化在不同的任务条件下，来自面部两侧的信号混合了多少。 因此，这些实验将开始解释神经元改变感觉输入组合的非凡能力，以适应和优化其处理变化的环境。 使用大鼠作为模型系统使得探测神经元组件通信的基本细胞机制成为可能。 从大鼠模型中收集到的灵活神经通信原理可能会为包括人类在内的进化高等生物的类似神经组织提供线索。 与此同时，下一代女大学生将接受定量分析和尖端行为神经生理学技术的培训。

How do sensory signals in different parts of the brain get combined to form a single unified perception that we experience? Despite amassing a wealth of detail in the past century about the cellular components of the brain, this fundamental question as to how their activities are coordinated or integrated, remains largely unanswered. The experiments proposed here would begin to uncover how neurons in the rat's touch sensory system combine signals from long whiskers on the two sides of its face when it judges the width of a tunnel opening in the dark. The approach is to record the electrical activity of sensory neurons while trained rats report whether they sense a wide or a narrow opening with their facial whiskers. Selectively turning off neurons on one side of the brain or the other (using a drug) will quantify how much the signals from the two sides of the face are being mixed in different task conditions. Thus these experiments will begin to explain the remarkable ability of neurons to change the mix of sensory inputs in order to adapt and optimize their processing for changing circumstances. Using the rat as a model system makes it feasible to probe fundamental cellular mechanisms by which assemblies of neurons communicate. Principles of flexible neural communication gleaned from the rat model will likely shed light on analogous neural organization in evolutionarily higher organisms including humans. At the same time, the next generation of undergraduate women will be trained in quantitative analysis and cutting-edge behavioral neurophysiology techniques.