NEURAL MECHANISMS OF CUTANEOUS SPATIAL INTEGRATION

这项拟议的研究的目的是确定感官原理 通过检查体感系统如何对空间信息进行编码 集成来自外观上多个点的输入。神经生理学和 心理学研究表明，神经系统经常表现出复杂的行为 这些多点刺激的空间和密集变换 放大或减弱它们的强度，并增加或减少空间 图案的分辨率。慢性单单位记录法的发展 测量感官的技术和可操作的行为方法 猴子的辨别能力，将使我能够研究 神经生理学和心理物理参数的转化 同一动物体内的空间信息。神经生理学表征 在皮肤上的多个点呈现的光触觉刺激将是 初级躯体感觉(S-I)皮质、背侧柱核和 清醒的、行为正常的恒河猴的腹底丘脑。这项调查可能 回答以下问题：刺激强度是如何编码的 体感皮质？神经系统是否整合了微弱的活动 以相同的方式在三个并行通道中传输， 单一渠道的活动？神经系统是如何解决两点的 皮肤？特征提取背后的神经机制是什么？ 复合体感觉皮层神经元的特性？神经网络如何在 大脑皮质的中继核在空间和强度上整合和转换 多点刺激的性质？注意力的作用是什么？ 空间整合与响应量？灵长类动物背柱怎么样？ 核是有组织的吗？这些问题的答案不仅对 了解躯体感觉功能，但可能普遍适用于 在其他感觉系统中整合多个信息通道。

The objective of the proposed research is to determine principles of sensory coding of spatial information by examining how the somatosensory system integrates inputs from multiple points on the skin. Neurophysiological and psychological studies have shown that the nervous system often performs complex spatial and intensive transformations of these multiple-point stimuli which amplify or diminish their intensity, and increase or decrease the spatial resolution of the pattern. The development of chronic single-unit recording techniques, together with operant behavioral methods for measuring sensory discriminitive abilities in monkeys, will permit me to study the neurophysiological and psychophysical parameters of the transformation of spatial information in the same animal. The neurophysiological representation of light tactile stimuli presented at multiple points on the skin will be studied in primary somatosensory (S-I) cortex, dorsal column nuclei, and ventro-basal thalamus of awake, behaving rhesus monkeys. This investigation may yield answers to the following questions: How is stimulus intensity encoded in the somatosensory cortex? Does the nervous system integrate weak activity transmitted in three parallel channels in the same manner that it does strong activity in a single channel? How does the nervous system resolve two points on the skin? What are the neuronal mechanisms underlying feature-extracting properties of complex somatosensory cortical neurons? How do neural networks in the relay nuclei to the cortex integrate and transform spatial and intensive properties of multiple-point stimuli? What is the effect of attention on spatial integration and response magnitude? How are the primate dorsal column nuclei organized? Answers to these questions will be useful not only for understanding somatosensory function, but may be of general applicability to integration of multiple channels of information in other sensory systems.