Journal of Neurophysiology, Vol 73, Issue 6 2428-2447, Copyright © 1995 by APS

ARTICLES

Effects of brain stem parabrachial activation on receptive field properties of cells in the cat's lateral geniculate nucleus

D. J. Uhlrich, N. Tamamaki, P. C. Murphy and S. M. Sherman
Department of Neurobiology, State University of New York, Stony Brook 11794-5230, USA.

1. The lateral geniculate nucleus is the primary thalamic relay for the transfer of retinal signals to the visual cortex. Geniculate cells are heavily innervated from nonretinal sources, and these modify retinogeniculate transmission. A major ascending projection to the lateral geniculate nucleus arises from cholinergic cells in the parabrachial region of the brain stem. This is an important pathway in the ascending control of arousal. In an in vivo preparation, we used extracellular recordings to study the effects of electrical activation of the parabrachial region on the spontaneous activity and visual responses of X and Y cells in the lateral geniculate nucleus of the cat. 2. We studied the effects of two patterns of parabrachial activation on the spontaneous activity of geniculate cells. Burst stimulation consisted of a short pulse at high frequency (16 ms at 250 Hz). Train stimulation was of longer duration at lower frequency (e.g., 1 s at 50 Hz). The firing rate of almost all geniculate cells was enhanced by either pattern of stimulation. However, the burst pattern of stimulation elicited a short, modulated response with excitatory and inhibitory epochs. We found that the different epochs could differentially modulate the visual responses to drifting gratings. Thus the temporal alignment of the brain stem and visual stimuli was critical with burst stimulation, and varied alignments could dramatically confound the results. In comparison, the train pattern of stimulation consistently produced a relatively flat plateau of increased firing, after a short initial period of more variable effects. We used the less confounding pattern of train stimuli to study the effects of parabrachial activation on visual responses. 3. Our main emphasis was to examine the parabrachial effects on the visual responses of geniculate cells. For most visual stimuli, we used drifting sine wave gratings that varied in spatial frequency; these evoked modulated responses from the geniculate cells. Parabrachial activation enhanced the visual responses of almost all geniculate cells, and this enhancement included both increased depth of modulation and greater response rates. 4. Our results were incorporated quantitatively into a difference-of-Gaussians model of visual receptive fields in order to study the parabrachial effects on the spatial structure of the receptive field. This model fit our data well and provided measures of the response amplitude and radius of the receptive field center (Kc and Rc, respectively) and the response amplitude and radius of the receptive field surround (Ks and Rs, respectively).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

This article has been cited by other articles:

				G. Govindaiah and C. L. Cox Metabotropic Glutamate Receptors Differentially Regulate GABAergic Inhibition in Thalamus J. Neurosci., December 27, 2006; 26(52): 13443 - 13453. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M. S. Grubb and I. D. Thompson Visual Response Properties of Burst and Tonic Firing in the Mouse Dorsal Lateral Geniculate Nucleus J Neurophysiol, June 1, 2005; 93(6): 3224 - 3247. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M. S. Grubb and I. D. Thompson Visual Response Properties in the Dorsal Lateral Geniculate Nucleus of Mice Lacking the {beta}2 Subunit of the Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor J. Neurosci., September 29, 2004; 24(39): 8459 - 8469. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M.-C. Perreault, Y. Qin, P. Heggelund, and J J. Zhu Postnatal development of GABAergic signalling in the rat lateral geniculate nucleus: presynaptic dendritic mechanisms J. Physiol., January 1, 2003; 546(1): 137 - 148. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				I. Fjeld, O Ruksenas, and P Heggelund Brainstem modulation of visual response properties of single cells in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus of cat J. Physiol., September 1, 2002; 543(2): 541 - 554. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				Y. Kobayashi, Y. Inoue, M. Yamamoto, T. Isa, and H. Aizawa Contribution of Pedunculopontine Tegmental Nucleus Neurons to Performance of Visually Guided Saccade Tasks in Monkeys J Neurophysiol, August 1, 2002; 88(2): 715 - 731. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				C. Rivadulla, L. M. Martinez, C. Varela, and J. Cudeiro Completing the Corticofugal Loop: A Visual Role for the Corticogeniculate Type 1 Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor J. Neurosci., April 1, 2002; 22(7): 2956 - 2962. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M. A Castro-Alamancos Different temporal processing of sensory inputs in the rat thalamus during quiescent and information processing states in vivo J. Physiol., March 1, 2002; 539(2): 567 - 578. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M. A. Castro-Alamancos Properties of Primary Sensory (Lemniscal) Synapses in the Ventrobasal Thalamus and the Relay of High-Frequency Sensory Inputs J Neurophysiol, February 1, 2002; 87(2): 946 - 953. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				D. J. Uhlrich, K. A. Manning, and J.-T. Xue Effects of Activation of the Histaminergic Tuberomammillary Nucleus on Visual Responses of Neurons in the Dorsal Lateral Geniculate Nucleus J. Neurosci., February 1, 2002; 22(3): 1098 - 1107. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. J. Zhu and P. Heggelund Muscarinic Regulation of Dendritic and Axonal Outputs of Rat Thalamic Interneurons: A New Cellular Mechanism for Uncoupling Distal Dendrites J. Neurosci., February 15, 2001; 21(4): 1148 - 1159. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				C. D. Brody Slow Covariations in Neuronal Resting Potentials Can Lead to Artefactually Fast Cross-Correlations in Their Spike Trains J Neurophysiol, December 1, 1998; 80(6): 3345 - 3351. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. H. Kaas, S. L. Florence, and N. Jain REVIEW {blacksquare} : Reorganization of Sensory Systems of Primates after Injury Neuroscientist, March 1, 1997; 3(2): 123 - 130. [Abstract] [PDF]

				A. EriÅŸir, S. C. Van Horn, and S. M. Sherman Relative numbers of cortical and brainstem inputs to the lateral geniculate nucleus PNAS, February 18, 1997; 94(4): 1517 - 1520. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]