scholarly journals Long-term, layer-specific reverberant activity in the mouse somatosensory cortex following sensory stimulation

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Phoka ◽  
Aleksandra Berditchevskaia ◽  
Mauricio Barahona ◽  
Simon R Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Spontaneous Activity ◽  
Somatosensory Cortex ◽  
Receptive Fields ◽  
Sensory Stimulation ◽  
Memory Storage ◽  
Firing Patterns ◽  
Neural Ensemble ◽  
Functional Relevance ◽  
Stimulus Offset

Neocortical circuits exhibit spontaneous neuronal activity whose functional relevance remains enigmatic. Several proposed functions assume that sensory experience can influence subsequent spontaneous activity. However, long-term alterations in spontaneous firing rates following sensory stimulation have not been reported until now. Here we show that multi-whisker, spatiotemporally rich stimulation of mouse vibrissae induces a laminar-specific, long-term increase of spontaneous activity in the somatosensory cortex. Such stimulation additionally produces stereotypical neural ensemble firing patterns from simultaneously recorded single neurons, which are maintained during spontaneous activity following stimulus offset. The increased neural activity and concomitant ensemble firing patterns are sustained for at least 25 minutes after stimulation, and specific to layers IV and Vb. In contrast, the same stimulation protocol applied to a single whisker fails to elicit this effect. Since layer Vb has the largest receptive fields and, together with layer IV, receives direct thalamic and lateral drive, the increase in firing activity could be the result of mechanisms involving the integration of spatiotemporal patterns across multiple whiskers. Our results provide direct evidence of modification of spontaneous cortical activity by sensory stimulation and could offer insight into the role of spatiotemporal integration in memory storage mechanisms for complex stimuli.

scholarly journals Pedagogical Strategies for the Enhancement of Medical Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad B. Azzam ◽  
Ronald A. Easteal
Keyword(s):  
Medical Education ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Retrieval Practice ◽  
Memory Storage ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Memory And Learning ◽  
Pedagogical Strategies ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Sleep Consolidation

AbstractClearly, memory and learning are essential to medical education. To make memory and learning more robust and long-term, educators should turn to the advances in neuroscience and cognitive science to direct their efforts. This paper describes the memory pathways and stages with emphasis leading to long-term memory storage. Particular stress is placed on this storage as a construct known as schema. Leading from this background, several pedagogical strategies are described: cognitive load, dual encoding, spiral syllabus, bridging and chunking, sleep consolidation, and retrieval practice.

Removal of a compressive mass causes a transient disruption of blood-brain barrier but a long-term recovery of spiny stellate neurons in the rat somatosensory cortex

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Tzu-Yin Yeh ◽  
Pei-Hsin Liu
Keyword(s):  
Somatosensory Cortex ◽  
Blood Brain Barrier ◽  
Dendritic Spines ◽  
Late Onset ◽  
Brain Barrier ◽  
Blood Brain ◽  
Afferent Fibers ◽  
Prolonged Recovery ◽  
Rat Somatosensory Cortex

Background: In the cranial cavity, a space-occupying mass such as epidural hematoma usually leads to compression of brain. Removal of a large compressive mass under the cranial vault is critical to the patients. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine whether and to what extent epidural decompression of the rat primary somatosensory cortex affects the underlying microvessels, spiny stellate neurons and their afferent fibers. Methods: Rats received epidural decompression with preceding 1-week compression by implantation of a bead. The thickness of cortex was measured using brain coronal sections. The permeability of blood-brain barrier (BBB) was assessed by Evans Blue and immunoglobulin G extravasation. The dendrites and dendritic spines of the spiny stellate neurons were revealed by Golgi— Cox staining and analyzed. In addition, the thalamocortical afferent (TCA) fibers in the cortex were illustrated using anterograde tracing and examined. Results: The cortex gradually regained its thickness over time and became comparable to the sham group at 3 days after decompression. Although the diameter of cortical microvessels were unaltered, a transient disruption of the BBB was observed at 6 hours and 1 day after decompression. Nevertheless, no brain edema was detected. In contrast, the dendrites and dendritic spines of the spiny stellate neurons and the TCA fibers were markedly restored from 2 weeks to 3 months after decompression. Conclusions: Epidural decompression caused a breakdown of the BBB, which was early-occurring and short-lasting. In contrast, epidural decompression facilitated a late-onset and prolonged recovery of the spiny stellate neurons and their afferent fibers.

scholarly journals Non-Local and Multi-Scale Mechanisms for Image Inpainting

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 3281
Author(s):  
Xu He ◽  
Yong Yin
Keyword(s):  
Markov Random Fields ◽  
Receptive Fields ◽  
Image Inpainting ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Visual Appearance ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Multi Scale ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Relationship Of

Recently, deep learning-based techniques have shown great power in image inpainting especially dealing with squared holes. However, they fail to generate plausible results inside the missing regions for irregular and large holes as there is a lack of understanding between missing regions and existing counterparts. To overcome this limitation, we combine two non-local mechanisms including a contextual attention module (CAM) and an implicit diversified Markov random fields (ID-MRF) loss with a multi-scale architecture which uses several dense fusion blocks (DFB) based on the dense combination of dilated convolution to guide the generative network to restore discontinuous and continuous large masked areas. To prevent color discrepancies and grid-like artifacts, we apply the ID-MRF loss to improve the visual appearance by comparing similarities of long-distance feature patches. To further capture the long-term relationship of different regions in large missing regions, we introduce the CAM. Although CAM has the ability to create plausible results via reconstructing refined features, it depends on initial predicted results. Hence, we employ the DFB to obtain larger and more effective receptive fields, which benefits to predict more precise and fine-grained information for CAM. Extensive experiments on two widely-used datasets demonstrate that our proposed framework significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches both in quantity and quality.

scholarly journals Diversity of neurovascular coupling dynamics along vascular arbors in layer II/III somatosensory cortex

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravi L. Rungta ◽  
Marc Zuend ◽  
Ali-Kemal Aydin ◽  
Éric Martineau ◽  
Davide Boido ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cerebral Cortex ◽  
Somatosensory Cortex ◽  
Cerebral Blood Volume ◽  
Transfer Functions ◽  
Neurovascular Coupling ◽  
Sensory Stimulation ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Blood Velocity ◽  
Functional Brain Imaging ◽  
Vascular Events

AbstractThe spatial-temporal sequence of cerebral blood flow (CBF), cerebral blood volume (CBV) and blood velocity changes triggered by neuronal activation is critical for understanding functional brain imaging. This sequence follows a stereotypic pattern of changes across different zones of the vasculature in the olfactory bulb, the first relay of olfaction. However, in the cerebral cortex, where most human brain mapping studies are performed, the timing of activity evoked vascular events remains controversial. Here we utilized a single whisker stimulation model to map out functional hyperemia along vascular arbours from layer II/III to the surface of primary somatosensory cortex, in anesthetized and awake Thy1-GCaMP6 mice. We demonstrate that sensory stimulation triggers an increase in blood velocity within the mid-capillary bed and a dilation of upstream large capillaries, and the penetrating and pial arterioles. We report that under physiological stimulation, response onset times are highly variable across compartments of different vascular arbours. Furthermore, generating transfer functions (TFs) between neuronal Ca2+ and vascular dynamics across different brain states demonstrates that anesthesia decelerates neurovascular coupling (NVC). This spatial-temporal pattern of vascular events demonstrates functional diversity not only between different brain regions but also at the level of different vascular arbours within supragranular layers of the cerebral cortex.

scholarly journals Increased neural correlations in primate auditory cortex during slow-wave sleep

2013 ◽  
Vol 109 (11) ◽  
pp. 2732-2738 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elias B. Issa ◽  
Xiaoqin Wang
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Spontaneous Activity ◽  
Slow Wave ◽  
Local Field ◽  
Local Field Potential ◽  
Slow Wave Sleep ◽  
Field Potential ◽  
Sensory Stimulation ◽  
Acoustic Stimulation ◽  
Functional Connections

During sleep, changes in brain rhythms and neuromodulator levels in cortex modify the properties of individual neurons and the network as a whole. In principle, network-level interactions during sleep can be studied by observing covariation in spontaneous activity between neurons. Spontaneous activity, however, reflects only a portion of the effective functional connectivity that is activated by external and internal inputs (e.g., sensory stimulation, motor behavior, and mental activity), and it has been shown that neural responses are less correlated during external sensory stimulation than during spontaneous activity. Here, we took advantage of the unique property that the auditory cortex continues to respond to sounds during sleep and used external acoustic stimuli to activate cortical networks for studying neural interactions during sleep. We found that during slow-wave sleep (SWS), local (neuron-neuron) correlations are not reduced by acoustic stimulation remaining higher than in wakefulness and rapid eye movement sleep and remaining similar to spontaneous activity correlations. This high level of correlations during SWS complements previous work finding elevated global (local field potential-local field potential) correlations during sleep. Contrary to the prediction that slow oscillations in SWS would increase neural correlations during spontaneous activity, we found little change in neural correlations outside of periods of acoustic stimulation. Rather, these findings suggest that functional connections recruited in sound processing are modified during SWS and that slow rhythms, which in general are suppressed by sensory stimulation, are not the sole mechanism leading to elevated network correlations during sleep.

Area MT Neurons Respond to Visual Motion Distant From Their Receptive Fields

2005 ◽  
Vol 94 (6) ◽  
pp. 4156-4167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Zaksas ◽  
Tatiana Pasternak
Keyword(s):  
Time Course ◽  
Visual Motion ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Receptive Fields ◽  
Direction Selectivity ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Visual Signals ◽  
Area Mt ◽  
Mt Neurons ◽  
Stimulus Offset

Neurons in cortical area MT have localized receptive fields (RF) representing the contralateral hemifield and play an important role in processing visual motion. We recorded the activity of these neurons during a behavioral task in which two monkeys were required to discriminate and remember visual motion presented in the ipsilateral hemifield. During the task, the monkeys viewed two stimuli, sample and test, separated by a brief delay and reported whether they contained motion in the same or in opposite directions. Fifty to 70% of MT neurons were activated by the motion stimuli presented in the ipsilateral hemifield at locations far removed from their classical receptive fields. These responses were in the form of excitation or suppression and were delayed relative to conventional MT responses. Both excitatory and suppressive responses were direction selective, but the nature and the time course of their directionality differed from the conventional excitatory responses recorded with stimuli in the RF. Direction selectivity of the excitatory remote response was transient and early, whereas the suppressive response developed later and persisted after stimulus offset. The presence or absence of these unusual responses on error trials, as well as their magnitude, was affected by the behavioral significance of stimuli used in the task. We hypothesize that these responses represent top-down signals from brain region(s) accessing information about stimuli in the entire visual field and about the behavioral state of the animal. The recruitment of neurons in the opposite hemisphere during processing of behaviorally relevant visual signals reveals a mechanism by which sensory processing can be affected by cognitive task demands.

Networks with lateral connectivity. III. Plasticity and reorganization of somatosensory cortex

1996 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Xing ◽  
G. L. Gerstein
Keyword(s):  
Spontaneous Activity ◽  
Network Model ◽  
Training Stimulus ◽  
Receptive Fields ◽  
Cortical Layer ◽  
Cortical Reorganization ◽  
Cortical Lesion ◽  
Behavioral Training ◽  
Dynamic Changes ◽  
Neuronal Groups

1. Mechanisms underlying cortical reorganizations were studied using a three-layered neural network model with neuronal groups already formed in the cortical layer. 2. Dynamic changes induced in cortex by behavioral training or intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) were simulated. Both manipulations resulted in reassembly of neuronal groups and formation of stimulus-dependent assemblies. Receptive fields of neurons and cortical representation of inputs also changed. Many neurons that had been weakly responsive or silent became active. 3. Several types of learning models were examined in simulating behavioral training, ICMS-induced dynamic changes, deafferentation, or cortical lesion. Each learning model most accurately reproduced features of experimental data from different manipulations, suggesting that more than one plasticity mechanism might be able to induce dynamic changes in cortex. 4. After skin or cortical stimulation ceased, as spontaneous activity continued, the stimulus-dependent assemblies gradually reverted into structure-dependent neuronal groups. However, relationships among individual neurons and identities of many neurons did not return to their original states. Thus a different set of neurons would be recruited by the same training stimulus sequence on its next presentation. 5. We also reproduced several typical long-term reorganizations caused by pathological manipulations such as cortical lesions, input loss, and digit fusion. 6. In summary, with Hebbian plasticity rules on lateral connections, the network model is capable of reproducing most characteristics of experiments on cortical reorganization. We propose that an important mechanism underlying cortical plastic changes is formation of temporary assemblies that are related to receipt of strongly synchronized localized input. Such stimulus-dependent assemblies can be dissolved by spontaneous activity after removal of the stimuli.

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