Oscillations trumped by behavior: a link between sensory and direct electrical stimulation of cortical activity

Adriano B L Tort

doi:10.3389/fnins.2010.00039

Abstract

Oscillations trumped by behavior: a link between sensory and direct electrical stimulation of cortical activity

Highlights

Behavior is well known to influence spiking responses in both thalamus and cortex to either sensory stimuli or electrical stimulation of afferent nerves (Chapin and Woodward, 1981; Fanselow and Nicolelis, 1999; Fontanini and Katz, 2009)
In Frontiers, Venkatraman and Carmena (2009) employ direct cortical recording and stimulation techniques that they have recently developed (Venkatraman et al, 2009) to provide evidence that this is the case. These findings suggest, for the first time, common cellular and network mechanisms underlying the cortical response to direct electrical activation and peripheral sensory stimulation
Making clever use of previous modeling work (Suffczynski et al, 2004), they show how strong feedforward inhibition could play a chief role in inducing thalamic neurons to burst, and suggest that the deinactivation of thalamic IT currents promoted by strong hyperpolarization is crucial to rebound excitation and beginning of bursting activity in these cells (IT currents are inactivated during excitation, and are set to deinactivate during prolonged inhibition; for reviews on this mechanism of bursting generation, see Sherman, 2001; Steriade, 2005; Huguenard and McCormick, 2007)

Summary

Introduction

Behavior is well known to influence spiking responses in both thalamus and cortex to either sensory stimuli or electrical stimulation of afferent nerves (Chapin and Woodward, 1981; Fanselow and Nicolelis, 1999; Fontanini and Katz, 2009). The fact that these phenomena are more commonly observed under systemic anesthesia (e.g., Derdikman et al, 2003) than in awake animals (but see Kay, 2005; Tort et al, 2010), makes it tempting to conclude, in light of the above-described work, that awake behavior might suppress both neuronal responses and oscillatory activity.

Results

Conclusion