Peripheral nerve damage facilitates functional innervation of brain grafts in adult sensory cortex

The neural pathways that relay information from cutaneous receptors to the cortex provide the somatic sensory information needed for cortical function. The last sensory relay neurons in this pathway have cell bodies in the thalamus and axons that synapse on neurons in the somatosensory cortex. After cortical lesions that damage mature thalamocortical fibers in the somatosensory cortex, we have attempted to reestablish somatosensory cortical function by grafting embryonic neocortical cells into the lesioned area. Such grafts survive in adult host animals but are not innervated by thalamic neurons, and consequently the grafted neurons show little if any spontaneous activity and no responses to cutaneous stimuli. We have reported that transection of peripheral sensory nerves prior to grafting "conditions" or "primes" the thalamic neurons in the ventrobasal complex so that they extend axons into grafts subsequently placed in the cortical domain of the cut nerve. In this report we present evidence that the ingrowth of ventrobasal fibers leads to graft neurons that become functionally integrated into the sensory circuitry of the host brain. Specifically, the conditioning lesions made prior to grafting produce graft neurons that are spontaneously active and can be driven by natural activation of cutaneous receptors or electrical stimulation of the transected nerve after it regenerates. Furthermore, oxidative metabolism in these grafts reaches levels that are comparable to normal cortex, whereas without prior nerve cut, oxidative metabolism is abnormally low in neocortical grafts. We conclude that damage to the sensory periphery transsynaptically stimulates reorganization of sensory pathways through mechanisms that include axonal elongation and functional synaptogenesis.