Topic: primary vibrissal somatosensory cortex

An animal’s ability to respond to its environment relies on effectively decoding neural representations of sensory stimuli. While it is known that primary sensory cortices represent sensory stimuli through specific patterns of activity, it is unknown how these representations are preserved over time. Many primary and higher order cortices have been shown to exhibit changes in neural activity representing the same sensory stimuli even when behavior is stable, a process dubbed ‘representational drift’. This poses a critical challenge for the brain – how can animals maintain stable perception and

TRP Vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) is a member of the TRP superfamily that is involved in the modulation of diverse sensations across species from reptiles to humans. In mammals, TRPV1 is predominantly known for its role in the peripheral nervous system as a modulator of noxious and thermal stimuli. However, there is limited knowledge about the role of this sensory channel in the Central Nervous System. Here, we investigated the function of cortical TRPV1 in sensory processing and detection. We implemented a whisker-based vibration detection task to explore the impact of TRPV1 on sensory perception, usin