Preferencje help
Widoczny [Schowaj] Abstrakt
Liczba wyników

Znaleziono wyników: 23

Liczba wyników na stronie
Pierwsza strona wyników Pięć stron wyników wstecz Poprzednia strona wyników Strona / 2 Następna strona wyników Pięć stron wyników wprzód Ostatnia strona wyników

Wyniki wyszukiwania

help Sortuj według:

help Ogranicz wyniki do:
Pierwsza strona wyników Pięć stron wyników wstecz Poprzednia strona wyników Strona / 2 Następna strona wyników Pięć stron wyników wprzód Ostatnia strona wyników
Feedback projections from the, so called, “higher-order” to the “lower order” structures are common feature of sensory systems. Those projections were proposed to control the flow of sensory information from the periphery to the cortex. The cortico-thalamic feedback of the mammalian visual system was extensively studied, yet we are still far away from understanding neuronal and network mechanisms engaged in this modulatory influence. In our earlier studies with cortical cooling as a method of reversible elimination of cortical input to thalamus, we have shown that cortical feedback modulated response magnitude and influenced receptive field organization of neurons in both lateral geniculate (LGN) and perigeniculate (PGN) nuclei. Elimination of the cortical input modified spontaneous firing rate of thalamic neurons, decreasing, as expected, activity of the relay LGN cells, and, surprisingly, increasing the activity of PGN interneurons. Our recent studies show that despite of different effects of the cortical feedback on spontaneous firing rate, elimination of cortical input similarly affects inter-spike intervals within bursts generated by LGN and PGN cells, increasing their length. These results suggest similar cellular mechanism underlying direct cortical influence exerted on the LGN relay cells and PGN interneurons.
INTRODUCTION: There are numerous methods to study neuronal processing of information about temporal frequency content of visual stimuli. The two most fundamental methods are 1) direct measurement of response amplitude, e.g. an amplitude of averaged visual evoked potential, and 2) assessment of response magnitude after transformation of electrophysiological signal from time to frequency domain. AIM(S): The aim of this study was to find an appropriate analysis method to characterize cortical responses to visual stimuli of various temporal frequencies. METHOD(S): Visual responses were recorded from both primary visual cortices, contra- and ipsilateral to the stimulated eye, using multichannel linear electrode arrays during electrophysiology experiments performed on anesthetized rats. As a visual stimulus we used 2-ms-long LED flashes delivered at two frequencies: 1 and 7 Hz. RESULTS: We found that for frequency of 1 Hz it is difficult to draw conclusions based on power spectrum alone. For frequency of 7 Hz the assessment of evoked potential in time domain was highly inaccurate. CONCLUSIONS: For 1 Hz the estimation of the visual evoked potential amplitude by direct measurement should be also performed. For 7 Hz the analysis should be performed after transformation of the signal from the time to frequency domain. Our results also indicate the advantages of the Welch method in comparison to the periodogram to analyze signals in the frequency domain. FINANCIAL SUPPORT: Supported by the Polish National Science Center grant Symfonia 1 (2013/08/W/NZ4/00691).
Noninvasive current stimulation is a rapidly developing tool for rehabilitation of visual impairment. The therapeutic use of current stimulation requires solving many technical problems including optimal placement of stimulating electrodes (SE). In this study we asked the question about origin of electrically evoked potential (EEP) and it’s dependence on the placement of the SE. In acute experiments on rats under urethane anaesthesia, visually (VEP) and electrically evoked potentials were recorded using single- and multi-channel electrodes from 5 visual structures: retina (1 channel), lateral geniculate nucleus (8 channels), superior colliculus (7 channels) and visual cortex of both hemispheres (16 channels each). Recordings of EEPs were performed to electrical pulse current stimulation, delivered using two electrodes placed either on one eye-ball (eye-eye montage) or on the eye-ball and neck (eyeneck montage). To reveal the origin of EEPs in both electrode montages 5 µl of tetrotodoxine (TTX 0.5 mM), was injected into the eye to block retinal ganglion cells’ activity and EEPs were recorded for both SE configurations. Lack of VEPs confirmed the successful block of ganglion cells’ activity. We have observed full decay of EEPs after TTX injection independent on the SE configurations. These results indicate on the retinal origin of EEPs regardless of the reference electrode placement. Supported by ERA-NET Neuron project REVIS.
Previously we have shown that variability of visual responses of superior colliculus (SC) neurons depended on whether the main visual input to the cell was of Y- or W-channel origin (Mochol et al. 2010). To better understand the mechanisms underlying previous finding in this study we test whether GABAergic system influences the variability of SC visual responses. In acute experiments on anesthetized cats extracellular responses of single neurons to spot of light moving in broad range of velocities were recorded from retinorecipient, superficial layers of SC, allowing to determine the Y- or W-channel input. Simultaneously local iontophoretic injections of GABA (nonspecific GABA receptors agonist) or bicuculline (GABAA receptors antagonist) were performed. Trial-by-trial variability was assessed with Fano factor (FF; ratio of variance of spike counts to mean number of spikes in a given period of time). In the majority of cells application of GABA resulted in decrease of firing rate (FR) and changes of FF. These changes were consistent with previously found correlations between FR and FF. If major input to the tested neuron was of Y-channel origin and changes in FF correlated negatively with changes in FR, GABA-induced decrease of FR was accompanied by an increase of FF. In the case of major W-type input the result was opposite: FF followed changes in FR, consistent with positive correlation between the two in control trials. Injection of bicuculline however, which typically resulted in an increase of neural activity, did not lead to coherent changes of variability. The FF could change slightly or remain unchanged independently of the correlation of FF and FR in control trials. Our results show that GABAergic system may play different roles in shaping the reliability of visual responses in SC depending on the origin of visual input and types of GABA receptors involved. Supported by Polish MSHE grant N N303 070234.
INTRODUCTION: Accumulating body of research has shown a cardinal bias for preference of spatially oriented targets in different species including humans, indicating greater neuronal responses in the primary visual cortex for horizontal or vertical contours in opposite to oblique ones. AIM(S): We used intrinsic signal optical imaging, a popular tool to map cortical function in rodents to verify the hypothesis whether a cardinal bias is present also in mouse primary visual cortex. METHOD(S): The experiments were performed on 7 week old wild mice under isoflurane anaesthesia. Intrinsic signals were recorded using CCD camera set above the visual cortex. Visual stimuli, square-wave black-and-white gratings (spatial frequency 0.05 cycle/degree, and temporal frequency 2 Hz, four orientations: 0, 45, 90, 135 degree) drifting in two directions, back and forth, were presented in random order with uniform grey images in 16 trials. Imaging was performed under the control of Imager 3001 system. Data were collected with 10 Hz resolution from 1 s before stimulus onset, during 7 s of visual stimulation and to 1 s after stimulus offset with 7 s interval between recordings. RESULTS: Using the described protocol of visual stimulation and data collection we could successfully map cortical responses to visual stimuli of different orientations. Collected images showed the strongest responses for horizontally and vertically oriented gratings. CONCLUSIONS: Our results support the hypothesis of the bias toward cardinal orientation preference in mouse visual cortex. FINANCIAL SUPPORT: Supported by the Polish National Science Center grant Symfonia 1 (2013/08/W/ NZ4/00691).
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Previous study showed that associative pairing involving monocular visual stimulation resulted in a significant increase of the density of cells expressing glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD), γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) synthesizing enzyme, in mouse primary visual cortex contralateral to the stimulated eye. The effect was attributed to the group of parvalbumin- (PV)-negative interneurons, since the density of PV-positive cells remained unaffected. The aim of the present study is to identify the group(s) of PV-negative GABA-ergic cells in mouse visual cortex that are mobilized by visual training combined with tail shock. METHODS: The same method of associative pairing (classical conditioning) involving monocular visual stimulation was used. We used nine young adult male mice, which were divided into two experimental groups: trained (5 mice) and naïve (4 mice) that served as a control. During three days lasting training, monocularly presented visual stimulus, drifting gratings of optimal spatial and temporal frequency (conditioned stimulus, CS), was coupled with electric shock applied to the tail (unconditioned stimulus, UCS) at the end of visual stimulation. Twenty four hours after the training (CS+UCS), mouse brains were subject to immunohistochemistry. The brain slices were photographed through fluorescent microscope and analyzed quantitatively to determine the amount of fluorescence using Fiji ImageJ software. RESULTS: Monocular visual training combined with tail shock resulted in a significant increase of GAD- and SOM-positive puncta in the contralateral primary visual cortex of (CS+UCS) mice in comparison to naive group. CONCLUSIONS: Our results confirm earlier finding of the upregulation of cortical GABA-ergic system by classical conditioning involving sensory stimulation and indicate on engagement of SOMpositive interneurons.
INTRODUCTION: It is generally accepted that neuronal plasticity can be induced at the cortical level. In our previous study we observed that relatively strong visual stimulation enhanced responses both at the cortical and subcortical level. The backward projection from the visual cortex to superior colliculus (SC) may facilitate the reinforcement of response in this midbrain structure. AIM(S): In the current study we examined how inactivation of the visual cortex affects responses in the SC after visual training. METHOD(S): Visual evoked potentials (VEPs) were recorded in anesthetized rats (n=5) from the primary visual cortex (VCx) and the SC, contralateral to stimulated eye, in response to flashing white‑light‑emitting diodes (LEDs) placed 10 cm in front of the rat. Monocular visual stimulation consisted of series of 300 repetitions of light flashes with 2 s intervals, presented every 15 minutes through 3 hours. In order to temporary block the activity of the cortex after 3-hour visual stimulation, a well above the contralateral VCx was fulfilled with xylocaine solution (2.5%). During cortical inactivation a single series of visual stimulation (300 stimulus repetitions) was presented and the SC VEP amplitudes were analysed. RESULTS: Chemical inactivation resulted in strong attenuation of cortical VEP amplitudes. In the case of the SC, cortical deactivation did not cause any significant difference in VEP amplitudes as compared to responses after 3 h of visual training. Collicular VEPs were still at the high level and significantly differed from control recording at the beginning of training, which indicates a minor impact of the VCx on response enhancement in the SC. CONCLUSIONS: Temporary deactivation of the visual cortex didn’t result in decline of VEP amplitudes in the SC, which indicates that increase of responses in SC after visual training is most likely due to enhancement of the retinal input to the SC. FINANCIAL SUPPORT: Supported by the Polish National Science Center grant Symfonia 1 (2013/08/W/NZ4/00691).
It is suggested that oscillatory activity of visual neurons plays an important role in encoding of information about stimuli. There are a number of publications on oscillations in the retino-geniculo-cortical pathway, but less is known about oscillatory activity in the extrageniculate pathway. We try to understand the role of oscillations in the processing of visual information in the superior colliculus (SC), the first, retinorecipient structure of the extrageniculate pathway, playing an important role in visual perception, spatial localization of an object of interest, saccadic eye movements and visually guided behavior. Extracellular single unit activity was recorded from superficial layers of the SC in anesthetized and paralyzed cats. Recordings were performed during periods without visual stimulation and also during visual stimulation with spot of light moving in a broad range of velocities or flashing at different locations of the receptive field in pseudo-random order. Autocorrelation function and Fourier transform were calculated for background as well as for evoked neuronal activity. Two variants of autocorrelation method revealed two kinds of oscillatory patterns: non-locked and locked to stimulus onset. First type of oscillations was found in the majority of analyzed cells during visually evoked activity and the frequency patterns of these oscillations were in many cases similar to those observed in background activity. The stimulus-locked oscillations were observed in about half of recorded cells and strength of these oscillations varied depending on firing rate, stimulus velocity and direction. Such oscillations were clearly visible in the case of fast changes in the receptive field of tested neuron. Since two types of oscillations occurred independently and sometimes simultaneously in the recorded activity, thus they may play different role in the processing of visual information by collicular neurons. Supported by Polish MSHE grant N N303 070234.
Firing rate of the majority of cells from superficial layers of cat’s superior colliculus (SC) is modulated in relatively long time scale. Such changes in spike generation do not depend on presented visual stimuli. To investigate whether these modulations of firing rate are related to changes in cortical states we analyzed visually evoked activity of SC neurons and electrocorticogram (ECoG) simultaneously recorded from the occipital lobe. The extracellular single unit activity was recorded from superficial, retinorecipient layers of the SC in anaesthetized and paralyzed cats. The level of anaesthesia was kept constant during recordings. As a visual stimulus we used light spot moving with different, randomly selected velocities. On average, each neuron was recorded continuously for 1 hour. Simultaneously we recorded ECoG from contralateral area 18 close to representation of the area centralis. The power spectra of ECoG data were calculated using fast Fourier transform in sliding windows. The firing rate of a given neuron was calculated in the same time windows and then correlated with the power in a given frequency band of ECoG. Most of the observed firing rate modulations were on the time scale from several to tens of minutes and were positively or negatively correlated with the changes in ECoG power in the band between 0.5 to 8 Hz, sometimes even to 13 Hz. For some neurons we also observed correlations between firing rate and power in the beta band (13 – 30 Hz) of ECoG and in most cases those correlations were opposite to correlations in lower bands. Rarely we observed also the relation between firing rate and the power of gamma band. Fast modulations of firing rate were not correlated with changes of ECoG power in any band. These results show that responsiveness of particular subpopulations of collicular neurons is differently related to the global state of brain activity. Supported by Polish MSHE grant N N303 070234.
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The aim of this study was to evoke plasticity in chosen structures of the rat visual system by visual training (sensory experience). METHODS: Local field potentials (LFPs) were recorded from the rat superior colliculus (SC) and primary visual cortex (VCx) of contralateral hemisphere to stimulated eye. LFPs were collected before, during and after visual training. The training consisted of series of 300 repetitions of light flashes separated by 2–3 s intervals. The series of stimuli were presented to the one eye every 15 minutes through three hours. RESULTS: Our data show that visual stimulation significantly enhanced magnitude of visual responses in both recorded structures. A significant increase of visual responses occurred after first hour of training (four stimulating series) both in SC and VCx. The largest increase of VEP amplitudes in the SC was observed after the third hour of stimulation and that was significantly different compared to the first and the second hour of training. Regarding the VCx, advanced alterations of VEPs were observed already after the first hour and then the amplitudes of cortical VEPs remained at a similar level to the end of training. To examine whether the above changes did not result from the changes in the level of anesthesia and global brain state, we considered the VCx LFP power ratio in delta (1–4 Hz) and beta (13–30 Hz) frequency range of the signal recorded for 30 s before each series of stimulation. Changes in the course of delta/beta ratio were similar for all channels in VCx during three hours of visual training and didn’t correlate with increase of VEPs. CONCLUSIONS: Repetitive visual stimulation enhance responses in the visual system, both at cortical and subcortical level, independently of the global brain state, thus may constitute a fundamental approach to improve visual functions. Supported by ERA-NET Neuron project REVIS.
INTRODUCTION: It is accepted that learning induces plastic changes in adult neocortex. Our previous experiments on mice showed that classical conditioning in which monocular visual stimulation was paired with an electric shock to the tail enhanced GABA immunoreactivity within layer 4 of the monocular part of the primary visual cortex (V1), contralateral to the stimulated eye. AIM(S): In the present study we investigated whether the same classical conditioning paradigm induced changes of neuronal excitability in this cortical area. METHOD(S): We performed patch-clamp whole-cell recordings from ex vivo slices of mouse V1. Two experimental groups were used: mice that had 7-day visual classical conditioning and control animals. The slices were perfused with the modified artificial cerebrospinal fluid, the composition of which better mimics the brain interstitial fluid in situ and induces spontaneous activity in slices. The frequency of spontaneous action potentials was calculated as a general measure of neuronal excitability. RESULTS: We found that layer 4 excitatory cells located in the monocular representation of the “trained” eye in V1 had lower frequency of spontaneous action potentials than neurons from the same cortical region of control animals. CONCLUSIONS: Weaker spontaneous firing indicates decreased general neuronal excitability within layer 4 of the monocular representation of the “trained” eye in V1. Such effect could result from enhanced inhibitory processes in this cortical area. FINANCIAL SUPPORT: Supported by the Polish National Science Center grant Symfonia 1 (2013/08/W/NZ4/00691) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no 665735 (Bio4Med) and by the funding from Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education within 2016–2020 funds for the implementation of international projects (agreement no 3548/H2020/COFUND/2016/2).
Visual information is transferred from retina to higher order cortical areas by few parallel pathways and encoded in different ways. In this study, we focused on encoding of visual information in the superior colliculus, which is the first stage of extrageniculate pathway. One of ways in which neurons encode information is rate coding based on the change in a number of action potentials in response to stimulus presentation. The other coding scheme is temporal coding, which include information about temporal patterns of neuronal spiking, present, for example, in the form of oscillations. The aim of this study was to reveal the presence of stimulus dependent oscillations in visually evoked activity of neurons in the superficial layers of the cat’s superior colliculus. Neuronal activity was recorded from anesthetized (isoflurane in N2O/O2) animals during visual stimulation by spot of light moving in broad range of velocities as well as during presentation of light spot flashing in random locations within the receptive field of recorded neuron. Oscillations were identified by means of auto-correlation and spectral analyses. We found stimulus dependent oscillations in half of tested neurons. Moreover, oscillatory activity appeared to depend on the stimulus velocity. Different measures of oscillations strength (SO), such as z-score, oscillation score or F-statistics revealed positive correlation between SO and velocity. Stimulus dependent oscillations appeared also in responses to onset of the light spot. These results suggest importance of oscillations for processing of information about fast changes within receptive fields of neurons in the extrageniculate pathway. Supposedly presence of oscillations in responses of collicular cells can increase probability of information transfer to higher level of visual processing. Supported by NCN grant N N303 820640.
Most of recent studies of the role of cortical feedback in thalamocortical loop focused on its effect on thalamo-cortical relay (TCR) cells of the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN). In a previous, physiological study we showed in cat visual system that cessation of cortical input decreased spontaneous activity of TCR cells and increased spontaneous firing of recurrent inhibitory interneurons located in the perigeniculate neucleus (PGN). To identify underlying mechanisms we studied several networks of point neurons with varied membrane properties, synaptic weights and axonal delays in NEURON simulator. We considered six network topologies. All models were robust against changes of axonal delays except for the delay between LGN feed-forward (f-f) interneuron and TCR cell. The best representation of physiological results gave models including reciprocally connected PGN cells driven by the cortex assuming slow decay of intracellular calcium. This indicates that thalamic reticular nucleus plays an essential role in the cortical influence over thalamo-cortical relay cells while the thalamic f-f interneurons are not essential in this process. The models revealed also that dependence of the PGN activity on the rate of calcium removal can be one of the key factors determining TCR response to diminished cortical input.
Pierwsza strona wyników Pięć stron wyników wstecz Poprzednia strona wyników Strona / 2 Następna strona wyników Pięć stron wyników wprzód Ostatnia strona wyników
JavaScript jest wyłączony w Twojej przeglądarce internetowej. Włącz go, a następnie odśwież stronę, aby móc w pełni z niej korzystać.