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A Cellular Resolution Map of Barrel Cortex Activity during Tactile Behavior.

Simon P Peron¹, Jeremy Freeman¹, Vijay Iyer¹

¹Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 19700 Helix Drive, Ashburn, VA 20147, USA.

|April 28, 2015

Summary

Researchers mapped neural activity in mouse barrel cortex during a whisker object localization task. They found sparse, intermingled representations of touch and whisker movement, with no plasticity observed after movement stereotypy emerged.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Sensory processing
Cortical circuits

Background:

Measuring neural activity in large populations is difficult.
Understanding tactile sensory processing in the barrel cortex is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

To comprehensively measure neural activity in mouse barrel cortex during a tactile task.
To investigate the representation of touch and whisker movement in cortical columns.

Main Methods:

Volumetric two-photon imaging of ~12,000 superficial barrel cortex neurons per mouse.
GCaMP6s and nuclear red fluorescent protein expression for neural activity visualization.
Encoding models to relate neural activity to behavioral variables during object localization.

Main Results:

Task-related neural activity peaked during object palpation.
Layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons encoded both touch and whisker movements.
Touch representation was column-specific, while whisker movement representation was widespread.
No significant plasticity in sensory representations was observed after task-related movement stereotypy.

Conclusions:

The mouse barrel cortex exhibits sparse and spatially intermingled representations of tactile features.
Touch direction is topographically organized, differing between passive and active touch.
Neural representations of tactile information are largely stable once movement patterns emerge.