Topic: somatotopy

Primary sensory brain areas contain innate stereotyped topographies like retinotopy and somatotopy, but evidence of similar topographies underlying abstract cortical representations remains equivocal. Experience-driven self-organization provides a complementary mechanism for neural circuit development which instead yields conserved features like orientation tuning, but has also mainly been studied in sensory cortices or artificial neural networks (ANNs). Here we pursue a high level perspective on conservation of topographies and feature spaces throughout the cortex using blood oxygen level d

Sensory systems relay vital information about changes in the environment to motor command circuits in the brainstem that then select optimal motor actions during navigation. The organization of different sensory inputs and the destination of the integrated output is essential to our understanding of action selection processes. The mechanoreceptive lateral line (LL) system of larval zebrafish (Danio rerio) mediates navigation by detecting flow relative to the body. The LL is innervated by peripheral afferent neurons that project to medial octavolateralis nuclei (MON) in the brainstem. Current m

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