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Sensorimotor processing in the rodent barrel cortex

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 20, pages 533–546 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Tactile sensory information from facial whiskers provides nocturnal tunnel-dwelling rodents, including mice and rats, with important spatial and textural information about their immediate surroundings. Whiskers are moved back and forth to scan the environment (whisking), and touch signals from each whisker evoke sparse patterns of neuronal activity in whisker-related primary somatosensory cortex (wS1; barrel cortex). Whisking is accompanied by desynchronized brain states and cell-type-specific changes in spontaneous and evoked neuronal activity. Tactile information, including object texture and location, appears to be computed in wS1 through integration of motor and sensory signals. wS1 also directly controls whisker movements and contributes to learned, whisker-dependent, goal-directed behaviours. The cell-type-specific neuronal circuitry in wS1 that contributes to whisker sensory perception is beginning to be defined.

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Fig. 1: Organization and connectivity of the whisker-related primary somatosensory cortex.
Fig. 2: Neural circuits for sparse reliable coding of touch in the whisker-related primary somatosensory cortex.
Fig. 3: Cell-type-specific modulation in the whisker-related primary somatosensory cortex during active whisking.
Fig. 4: Sensorimotor computations in the whisker-related primary somatosensory cortex.
Fig. 5: Neural circuits involved in goal-directed sensorimotor transformation.

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Acknowledgements

The author’s research work is supported by grants 31003A_182010 and CRSII5_177237 from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

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  1. Laboratory of Sensory Processing, Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

    Carl C. H. Petersen

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Glossary

Somatotopic map

The exact correspondence of neighbouring body areas mapped to neighbouring locations in the brain.

Mystacial

Resembling a moustache; in rodents, the long whiskers on the snout (macrovibrissae).

Trigeminal ganglion

Sensory ganglion of the trigeminal nerve.

Sparse coding

Coding that involves a small fraction of available neurons.

Membrane time constant

The time needed to discharge neuronal membrane capacitance.

Reafference signals

Sensory signals generated by self-driven motion.

Efference copies

Internal motor-related signals used for sensory processing.

Plateau potentials

Persistent inward currents giving long-lasting depolarization.

Associative learning

Learning of the relationship between sensorimotor events.

Hit rates

The fraction of stimulus trials in which the desired response is evoked.

Credit-assignment problem

Many circuits are typically active during trial-and-error-based learning and it is difficult to determine which synapses should change.

Eligibility traces

Short-term memory of a recently active circuit that is eligible for changes associated with learning.

Three-factor plasticity rules

Synaptic plasticity rules that depend on presynaptic activity, postsynaptic activity and an additional factor (typically a neuromodulator).

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Petersen, C.C.H. Sensorimotor processing in the rodent barrel cortex. Nat Rev Neurosci 20, 533–546 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-019-0200-y

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