JN Fuel your research with LabChart
HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH
QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced]


     

J Neurophysiol (October 25, 2006). doi:10.1152/jn.00777.2006
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
97/1/647    most recent
00777.2006v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Higley, M. J.
Right arrow Articles by Contreras, D.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Higley, M. J.
Right arrow Articles by Contreras, D.
Submitted on July 27, 2006
Accepted on October 20, 2006

Cellular Mechanisms of Suppressive Interactions Between Somatosensory Responses in vivo

Michael J. Higley1 and Diego Contreras2*

1 Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
2 Dept. of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: diegoc{at}mail.med.upenn.edu.

The neural integration of afferent inputs evoked by spatiotemporally distributed sensory stimuli is a critical step in the formation of coherent and continuous perceptual representations. Integration mechanisms in various systems include linear and non-linear summation of sensory responses. One well-known example in the rat barrel system is the suppressive interaction between responses to the consecutive deflection of neighboring whiskers. The mechanism underlying cross-whisker suppression has long been postulated to rely on intracortical postsynaptic inhibition, although this hypothesis has been challenged by recent reports. Here we show, using intracellular and extracellular recordings in vivo, that cross-whisker suppression occurs in the absence of cortical activity. Instead, suppression arises from local circuit operations at multiple levels of the subcortical afferent pathway and is amplified by the nonlinear transformation of synaptic input into spike output in both the thalamus and cortex. Because these cellular processes are common to neural circuits subserving visual and auditory modalities, we propose that the suppressive mechanisms elucidated here are a general property of thalamocortical sensory systems.




This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 J. Neurophysiol.Home page
B. Scholl, X. Gao, and M. Wehr
Level Dependence of Contextual Modulation in Auditory Cortex
J Neurophysiol, April 1, 2008; 99(4): 1616 - 1627.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 J. Neurophysiol.Home page
S.-H. Lee, P. W. Land, and D. J. Simons
Layer- and Cell-Type-Specific Effects of Neonatal Whisker-Trimming in Adult Rat Barrel Cortex
J Neurophysiol, June 1, 2007; 97(6): 4380 - 4385.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 J. Neurophysiol.Home page
M. J. Higley and D. Contreras
Frequency Adaptation Modulates Spatial Integration of Sensory Responses in the Rat Whisker System
J Neurophysiol, May 1, 2007; 97(5): 3819 - 3824.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH
Visit Other APS Journals Online
Copyright © 2006 by the The American Physiological Society.