Topic: primary whisker somatosensory cortex

Flexible integration of sensory information in a context-dependent manner is a key cognitive process required to generate appropriate behavior. An intriguing question, then, is how the same sensory stimulus can be interpreted differently according to context in order to generate different behavioral responses. We designed a task in which mice were trained to lick for reward in response to a brief single whisker stimulus if it was preceded by a brief Go-Tone presented one second before the whisker stimulus, but not if it was preceded by a NoGo-Tone. Optogenetic inactivation of primary whisker s

Olfaction is considered the evolutionarily oldest sense, which together with somatosensation, is crucial for neonatal well-being before audition and vision start engaging the brain. Using anatomical and functional approaches, we reveal that olfactory-driven activity propagates to a large part of the cortex during the first postnatal week, and enhances whisker-evoked activation of primary whisker somatosensory cortex (wS1). This effect disappears in adult mice, due to the loss of neonatal excitatory connectivity from olfactory cortex to wS1. By performing developmental olfactory-deprivation and

Multisensory integration requires transformations between coordinate systems. When an object is touched and seen at the same time, tactile signals from the snout’s vibrissae arrive in the somatotopically organized primary whisker somatosensory cortex (wS1) whereas visual signals arrive in the retinotopically organized primary visual cortex (V1). The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) in-between is a candidate cortical region for merging these two representations. However, how converging visual and tactile inputs of nearby objects are processed in these cortical areas remains unclear. To address t