Long-term potentiation in the motor cortex

Long-term potentiation (LTP) is a model for learning and memory processes. Tetanic stimulation of the sensory cortex produces LTP in motor cortical neurons, whereas tetanization of the ventrolateral nucleus of the thalamus, which also projects to the motor cortex, does not. However, after simultaneous high-frequency stimulation of both the sensory cortex and the ventrolateral nucleus of the thalamus, LTP of thalamic input to motor cortical neurons is induced. This associative LTP occurs only in neurons in the superficial layers of the motor cortex that receive monosynaptic input from both the sensory cortex and the ventrolateral nucleus of the thalamus. Associative LTP in the motor cortex may constitute a basis for the retention of motor skills.     

Hoxa2- and rhombomere-dependent development of the mouse facial somatosensory map

In the mouse trigeminal pathway, sensory inputs from distinct facial structures, such as whiskers or lower jaw and lip, are topographically mapped onto the somatosensory cortex through relay stations in the thalamus and hindbrain. In the developing hindbrain, the mechanisms generating such maps remain elusive. We found that in the principal sensory nucleus, the whisker-related map is contributed by rhombomere 3-derived neurons, whereas the rhombomere 2-derived progeny supply the lower jaw and lip representation. Moreover, early Hoxa2 expression in neuroepithelium prevents the trigeminal nerve from ectopically projecting to the cerebellum, whereas late expression in the principal sensory nucleus promotes selective arborization of whisker-related afferents and topographic connectivity to the thalamus. Hoxa2 inactivation further results in the absence of whisker-related maps in the postnatal brain. Thus, Hoxa2- and rhombomere 3-dependent cues determine the whisker area map and are required for the assembly of the whisker-to-barrel somatosensory circuit.     

Experimentally induced visual projections into auditory thalamus and cortex

Retinal cells have been induced to project into the medial geniculate nucleus, the principal auditory thalamic nucleus, in newborn ferrets by reduction of targets of retinal axons in one hemisphere and creation of alternative terminal space for these fibers in the auditory thalamus. Many cells in the medial geniculate nucleus are then visually driven, have large receptive fields, and receive input from retinal ganglion cells with small somata and slow conduction velocities. Visual cells with long conduction latencies and large contralateral receptive fields can also be recorded in primary auditory cortex. Some visual cells in auditory cortex are direction selective or have oriented receptive fields that resemble those of complex cells in primary visual cortex. Thus, functional visual projections can be routed into nonvisual structures in higher mammals, suggesting that the modality of a sensory thalamic nucleus or cortical area may be specified by its inputs during development.     

Auditory pathways to the frontal cortex of the mustache bat, Pteronotus parnellii

In primates, certain areas of the frontal cortex play a role in guiding movements toward visual or auditory objects in space. The projections from auditory centers to the frontal cortex of the bat Pteronotus parnellii were examined because echolocating bats utilize auditory cues to guide their movements in space. An area in the frontal cortex receives a direct projection from a division of the auditory thalamus, the suprageniculate nucleus, which in turn receives input from the anterolateral peri-olivary nucleus, an auditory center in the medulla. This pathway to the frontal cortex bypasses the main auditory centers in the midbrain and cortex and could involve as few as four neurons between the cochlea and the frontal cortex. The auditory cortex is also a major source of input to the frontal cortex. This area of the frontal cortex may link the auditory and motor systems by its projections to the superior colliculus.     

猪大脑皮质十字前回和后回的传入联系

用辣根过氧化物酶法研究了４只仔猪大脑皮质十字前回和后回传入神经的来源，将ＨＲＰ注入十字前回，在蓝斑，中缝背核，中脑中央灰质，丘脑背内侧核，腹前核，腹外侧核和板内核，十字前回和薛氏回等诸多结构内出现标记细胞。将ＨＲＰ注入十字后回，在蓝斑，中脑中央灰质，中缝背核，丘脑外侧核群，背内侧核，板内核，十字前回和后回，冠状回和扣带回等处出现标记细胞，结果表明，此二回均接受广泛的传入纤维，在丘脑皮质联系中，十字     

Alzheimer's disease: cell-specific pathology isolates the hippocampal formation

Examination of temporal lobe structures from Alzheimer patients reveals a specific cellular pattern of pathology of the subiculum of the hippocampal formation and layers II and IV of the entorhinal cortex. The affected cells are precisely those that interconnect the hippocampal formation with the association cortices, basal forebrain, thalamus, and hypothalamus, structures crucial to memory. This focal pattern of pathology isolates the hippocampal formation from much of its input and output and probably contributes to the memory disorder in Alzheimer patients.     

Feedback connections to the lateral geniculate nucleus and cortical response properties

The cerebral cortex receives sensory input from the periphery by means of thalamic relay nuclei, but the flow of information goes both ways. Each cortical area sends a reciprocal projection back to the thalamus. In the visual system, the synaptic relations that govern the influence of thalamic afferents on orientation selectivity in the cortex have been studied extensively. It now appears that the connectivity of the corticofugal feedback pathway is also fundamentally linked to the orientation preference of the cortical cells involved.     

Differential representation of perception and action in the frontal cortex

A motor illusion was created to separate human subjects' perception of arm movement from their actual movement during figure drawing. Trajectories constructed from cortical activity recorded in monkeys performing the same task showed that the actual movement was represented in the primary motor cortex, whereas the visualized, presumably perceived, trajectories were found in the ventral premotor cortex. Perception and action representations can be differentially recognized in the brain and may be contained in separate structures.     

Amygdaloid nucleus: new afferent input from the vomeronasal organ

Terminal degeneration stained by the Fink-Heimer technique was found in the medial and cortical amygdaloid nuclei in a discrete zone after lesions were inflicted in the accessory olfactory bulb but not after lesions were made in the main olfactory bulb in the rabbit. Since the accessory olfactory bulb receives the endings of the vomeronasal nerve, the mediocortical complex of the amygdala is the central projection area for the vomeronasal sensory organ. The vomeronasal organ is seen as having new potential significance in sexual and feeding behavior because the cortical amygdaloid nucleus projects to the anterior, medial hypothalamus and the ventromedial nucleus.     

Expression of c-fos protein in brain: metabolic mapping at the cellular level

The proto-oncogene c-fos is expressed in neurons in response to direct stimulation by growth factors and neurotransmitters. In order to determine whether the c-fos protein (Fos) and Fos-related proteins can be induced in response to polysynaptic activation, rat hindlimb motor/sensory cortex was stimulated electrically and Fos expression examined immunohistochemically. Three hours after the onset of stimulation, focal nuclear Fos staining was seen in motor and sensory thalamus, pontine nuclei, globus pallidus, and cerebellum. Moreover, 24-hour water deprivation resulted in Fos expression in paraventricular and supraoptic nuclei. Fos immunohistochemistry therefore provides a cellular method to label polysynaptically activated neurons and thereby map functional pathways.     

Paths of information flow through visual cortex.

The main route of information flow in the cerebral cortex is from the middle layers of cortex to upper and lower layers. However, upper layers of the cat primary visual cortex can be directly driven by inputs from secondary visual cortex when activity in middle layers is disrupted. Upper-layer activity can be driven either by middle layers or by direct corticocortical inputs. One consequence of this result is that areas of cortex thought to be carrying out low-order analysis may be able to extract considerable information from higher order areas.     

Descending efferents from the superior colliculus relay integrated multisensory information

By means of their efferent projections to motor and premotor structures, the cells in the deep superior colliculus are intimately involved in behaviors that control the orientation of the eyes, pinnae, and head. These same efferent cells receive multiple sensory inputs, thereby apparently enabling an animal to orient its receptor organs in response to a wide variety of cues. This sensory convergence also provides a system in which motor responses need not be immutably linked to individual stimuli but can vary in reaction to the multitude of stimuli present in the environment at any given moment.     

Retinal projections in blind snakes

Following unilateral enucleation of blind snakes, serial sections of the brains were stained by the Fink-Heimer procedure; the sections revealed terminal degeneration in the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus bilaterally, nucleus posterodorsalis of the pretectum bilaterally, and superficial layers of the contralateral optic tectum. The stained degenerating fibers in the tectum were considerably less dense than in the thalamus.     

Hippocampal place fields emerge upon single-cell manipulation of excitability during behavior

The origin of the spatial receptive fields of hippocampal place cells has not been established. A hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cell receives thousands of synaptic inputs, mostly from other spatially tuned neurons; however, how the postsynaptic neuron's cellular properties determine the response to these inputs during behavior is unknown. We discovered that, contrary to expectations from basic models of place cells and neuronal integration, a small, spatially uniform depolarization of the spatially untuned somatic membrane potential of a silent cell leads to the sudden and reversible emergence of a spatially tuned subthreshold response and place-field spiking. Such gating of inputs by postsynaptic neuronal excitability reveals a cellular mechanism for receptive field origin and may be critical for the formation of hippocampal memory representations.     

鸡躯体和内脏初级传入纤维在脊髓和延髓的共同投射

采用ＣＢ—ＨＲＰ跨神经节追踪技术，我们发现鸡躯体和内脏的初级传入投射在脊髓质的一些板层和延髓的一些核团内有重叠区。１腓肠肌外头与卵巢的初级传入在Ｔ６～Ｌ３及Ｓ３～Ｓ５脊髓节段的Ｉ、Ⅴ层有明显的投射重叠区；与睾丸的初级传入在Ｔ６～Ｌ２及Ｓ３～Ｓ５髓节的Ｉ、Ⅴ层有明显的投射重叠；与泄殖腔的初级传入在Ｔ７～Ｌ２及Ｓ３～Ｓ５髓节的Ｉ、Ⅴ层亦有明显的重叠投射。２跗部皮肤与泄殖腔的在Ｌ２及Ｓ３髓节的Ｉ、Ⅳ层，与卵巢的在Ｌ２～Ｌ３髓节的Ｉ、Ⅳ层，与睾丸的在Ｌ３及Ｓ３髓节的Ｉ、Ⅳ层均有轻度的投射重叠区。３挠神经与腺胃及胸腺的在延髓的楔束外核和弧束核的内侧亚核有重叠投射区，４挠神经与卵巢、睾丸的在孤束核的内侧亚核有重叠；推测鸡的躯体和内脏的初级传入在这些区域可能有汇聚。     

The neostriatal mosaic: striatal patch-matrix organization is related to cortical lamination

The basal ganglia, of which the striatum is the major component, process inputs from virtually all cerebral cortical areas to affect motor, emotional, and cognitive behaviors. Insights into how these seemingly disparate functions may be integrated have emerged from studies that have demonstrated that the mammalian striatum is composed of two compartments arranged as a mosaic, the patches and the matrix, which differ in their neurochemical and neuroanatomical properties. In this study, projections from prefrontal, cingulate, and motor cortical areas to the striatal compartments were examined with the Phaseolus vulgaris-leucoagglutinin (PHA-L) anterograde axonal tracer in rats. Each cortical area projects to both the patches and the matrix of the striatum; however, deep layer V and layer VI corticostriatal neurons project principally to the patches, whereas superficial layer V and layer III and II corticostriatal neurons project principally to the matrix. The relative contribution of patch and matrix corticostriatal projections varies among the cortical areas examined such that allocortical areas provide a greater number of inputs to the patches than to the matrix, whereas the reverse obtains for neocortical areas. These results demonstrate that the compartmental organization of corticostriatal inputs is related to their laminar origin and secondarily to the cytoarchitectonic area of origin.     

Motor cortex reflexes associated with learned movement

In primates, sensory input can generate reflex motor cortex output in association with learned movement when the sensory input has a strong and direct connection to the motor cortex-for example, when a stimulus calling for repositioning of the hand consists of a perturbation of hand position. This finding supports the proposal that neurons of primate motor cortex may function in a transcortical servo-loop.     

Activation of central neurons by ventral root afferents

It is a fundamental principle of vertebrate neuronal organization that sensory fibers are restricted to dorsal roots and motor fibers to ventral roots. Recent evidence, however, indicates that there are many sensory fibers in ventral roots. The present report shows that stimulation of these fibers activates neurons in the dorsal horn. This provides evidence at the single-cell level for the importance of ventral root afferents and provides an explanation for the clinical phenomenon of recurrent sensibility.     

Physiological evidence for serial processing in somatosensory cortex

Removal of the representation of a specific body part in the postcentral cortex of the macaque resulted in the somatic deactivation of the corresponding body part in the second somatosensory area. In contrast, removal of the entire second somatosensory area had no grossly detectable effect on the somatic responsivity of neurons in the postcentral cortex. This direct electrophysiological evidence for serial cortical processing in somesthesia is similar to that found earlier for vision and, taken together with recent anatomical evidence, suggests that there is a common cortical plan for the processing of sensory information in the various sensory modalities.     

Cerebral cortex: a sensorimotor amalgam in the marsupiala

In the cerebral cortex of the opossum and the wallaby there Is a complete and coincident overlap of the sensory and the motor representations of the body. Within this sensorimotor area It is not possible to draw the line which in other mammals separates a primarily sensory area from a primarily motor area.