Topic: tactile information

During behavior, cortical neurons are continuously integrating task-relevant information from the opposite hemisphere. While the importance of bilateral integration to behavior may appear obvious, its underlying neural mechanisms are almost entirely unknown. Naïve models of processing often assume that bilateral integration only occurs at higher cortical levels, despite an abundance of interhemispheric (IH) circuits in the primary sensory cortices. However, the basic circuit logic by which the corpus callosum operates remains poorly understood. To reveal the logic of bilateral integration and

The spatial coding of tactile information is functionally essential for touch-based shape perception and motor control. However, the spatiotemporal dynamics of how tactile information is remapped from the somatotopic reference frame in the primary somatosensory cortex to the spatiotopic reference frame remains unclear. This study investigated how hand position in space or posture influences cortical somatosensory processing. Twenty-two healthy subjects received electrical stimulation to the right thumb (D1) or little finger (D5) in three position conditions: palm down on right side of the body

Hierarchical processing has been shown to underlie complex functions such as invariant object coding. The perirhinal cortex (PER) is a higher-order region that sits at the apex of such processing streams and is involved in object recognition. Although it receives tactile information from barrel cortex (wS1) and secondary somatosensory cortex (S2), it is unclear how PER neurons respond to such stimuli. To address this, we performed population recordings of the barrel and perirhinal cortices of head-fixed mice while an object deflected their whiskers. Both ipsi- and contralateral stimulations we

The integration of sensory inputs from different senses is a crucial aspect of sensory perception and behavioral decisions. Whether such multisensory integration occurs at specific stages of neural processing remains unclear. Two brain regions, the anterolateral motor cortex (ALM) and the superior colliculus (SC) are important parts of a cortico-subcortical loop that transforms multisensory inputs into behavioral decisions. To study the role of these areas in multisensory integration and decision-making, we trained mice in a multisensory discrimination task, where animals had to integrate visu

Real world information received by sensory systems is highly dynamic. If and how the recent temporal dynamics, as in the preceding intervals, shape cortical processing is unclear. Here we recorded the cortical signals (EEG) in response to a dynamic train of tactile stimulations applied at the fingertips ( n = 64). We separated the cortical signals according to the next interval dynamics by using a joint-interval distribution (JID) spanning 100ms to 10s. This yielded a two-dimensional event-related potential (JID-ERP) at all the examined time points of the EEG signal (-200 to 300 ms latency fro