TY - JOUR
T1 - Embedding a panoramic representation of infrared light in the adult rat somatosensory cortex through a sensory neuroprosthesis
AU - Hartmann, Konstantin
AU - Thomson, Eric E.
AU - Zea, Ivan
AU - Yun, Richy
AU - Mullen, Peter
AU - Canarick, Jay
AU - Huh, Albert
AU - Nicolelis, Miguel A.L.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 the authors.
PY - 2016/2/24
Y1 - 2016/2/24
N2 - Can the adult brain assimilate a novel, topographically organized, sensory modality into its perceptual repertoire? To test this, we implemented a microstimulation-based neuroprosthesis that rats used to discriminate among infrared (IR) light sources. This system continuously relayed information from four IR sensors that were distributed to provide a panoramic view of IR sources, into primary somatosensory cortex (S1). Rats learned to discriminate the location of IR sources in <4 d. Animals in which IR information was delivered in spatial register with whisker topography learned the task more quickly. Further, in animals that had learned to use the prosthesis, altering the topographic mapping from IR sensor to stimulating electrode had immediate deleterious effects on discrimination performance. Multielectrode recordings revealed that S1 neurons had multimodal (tactile/IR) receptive fields, with clear preferences for those stimuli most likely to be delivered during the task. Neuronal populations predicted, with high accuracy, which stimulation pattern was present in small (75 ms) time windows. Surprisingly, when identical microstimulation patterns were delivered during an unrelated task, cortical activity in S1 was strongly suppressed. Overall, these results show that the adult mammalian neocortex can readily absorb completely new information sources into its representational repertoire, and use this information in the production of adaptive behaviors.
AB - Can the adult brain assimilate a novel, topographically organized, sensory modality into its perceptual repertoire? To test this, we implemented a microstimulation-based neuroprosthesis that rats used to discriminate among infrared (IR) light sources. This system continuously relayed information from four IR sensors that were distributed to provide a panoramic view of IR sources, into primary somatosensory cortex (S1). Rats learned to discriminate the location of IR sources in <4 d. Animals in which IR information was delivered in spatial register with whisker topography learned the task more quickly. Further, in animals that had learned to use the prosthesis, altering the topographic mapping from IR sensor to stimulating electrode had immediate deleterious effects on discrimination performance. Multielectrode recordings revealed that S1 neurons had multimodal (tactile/IR) receptive fields, with clear preferences for those stimuli most likely to be delivered during the task. Neuronal populations predicted, with high accuracy, which stimulation pattern was present in small (75 ms) time windows. Surprisingly, when identical microstimulation patterns were delivered during an unrelated task, cortical activity in S1 was strongly suppressed. Overall, these results show that the adult mammalian neocortex can readily absorb completely new information sources into its representational repertoire, and use this information in the production of adaptive behaviors.
KW - Barrel cortex
KW - Rat
KW - Sensory prosthetic
KW - Whisker system
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U2 - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3285-15.2016
DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3285-15.2016
M3 - Article
C2 - 26911689
AN - SCOPUS:84959449987
SN - 0270-6474
VL - 36
SP - 2406
EP - 2424
JO - Journal of Neuroscience
JF - Journal of Neuroscience
IS - 8
ER -