Cortical circuitry mediating interareal touch signal amplification.

Sensory cortical areas are organized into topographic maps representing the sensory epithelium. Interareal projections typically connect topographically matched subregions across areas. Because matched subregions process the same stimulus, their interaction is central to many computations.

Sparse and distributed cortical populations mediate sensorimotor integration.

Touch information is central to sensorimotor integration, yet little is known about how cortical touch and movement representations interact. Touch- and movement-related activity is present in both somatosensory and motor cortices, making both candidate sites for touch-motor interactions. We studied touch-motor interactions in layer 2/3 of the primary vibrissal somatosensory and motor cortices of behaving mice.

Cortical circuitry mediating inter-areal touch signal amplification.

Sensory cortical areas are often organized into topographic maps which represent the sensory epithelium. Individual areas are richly interconnected, in many cases via reciprocal projections that respect the topography of the underlying map. Because topographically matched cortical patches process the same stimulus, their interaction is likely central to many neural computations.

Microstimulation of sensory cortex engages natural sensory representations.

Cortical activity patterns occupy a small subset of possible network states. If this is due to intrinsic network properties, microstimulation of sensory cortex should evoke activity patterns resembling those observed during natural sensory input. Here, we use optical microstimulation of virally transfected layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons in the mouse primary vibrissal somatosensory cortex to compare artificially evoked activity with natural activity evoked by whisker touch and movement ("whisking").

Columnar Lesions in Barrel Cortex Persistently Degrade Object Location Discrimination Performance.

Primary sensory cortices display functional topography, suggesting that even small cortical volumes may underpin perception of specific stimuli. Traditional loss-of-function approaches have a relatively large radius of effect (>1 mm), and few studies track recovery following loss-of-function perturbations. Consequently, the behavioral necessity of smaller cortical volumes remains unclear.