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种其他动物通讯的主要方式。即使是人类也表现出一种重要的，如果很大程度上是潜意识的，化学感觉交流的形式，比如当生活在一起的女性影响彼此的月经周期时。在啮齿动物和人类中，杏仁核是参与评估各种感觉/社会信息的主要大脑区域。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缺乏的一个过程。内侧杏仁核在处理和分类关于未习得的化学感觉信号的信息方面特别重要。我们和其他人已经确定了不同动物模型的内侧杏仁核中的回路，这些回路可以区分化学感觉信息的类别，并且这些回路与其他杏仁核部门使用的回路共享关键特征，这些回路分析了各种物种的其他感觉信号。在这里，我们调查这些电路的激活，在行为动物在大脑中的细胞水平，测试替代假设的原则杏仁核电路的操作在歧视未学习的信息素样化学信号。杏仁核也参与重新分配价值的化学感觉刺激的基础上的经验，在这里，我们将修改的意义化学感觉刺激的行为动物，条件和确定是否重新路由信息从事一个新的输出电路，以及是否与无条件刺激的分类是保持，改变或缺席。即时早期基因表达将用于绘制细胞水平的大脑反应（随时间平均），单神经元电生理学将用于测量对多种刺激的反应（以更高的时间分辨率），以识别和表征所涉及的神经元。回路内神经元组之间的功能连接将通过神经连接的解剖追踪来确定。本研究将探讨杏仁核在感觉加工和经验性感觉刺激的显著性再分配中的功能。这些过程可能涉及自闭症或其他感官评价，情感和沟通障碍。相关性这项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于分析和分类其他类型的感觉刺激的电路具有共同特征。

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.