Spiking in primary somatosensory cortex during natural whisking in awake head-restrained rats is cell-type specific |
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| Authors: | Christiaan P. J. de Kock Bert Sakmann |
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| Affiliation: | aDepartment of Neuroscience, Erasmus Medical Center, Dr. Molewaterplein 50, NL-3015 GE Rotterdam, The Netherlands; ;bDepartment of Integrative Neurophysiology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, de Boelelaan 1085, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and ;cMax-Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Am Klopferspitz 18, D-82152 Martinsried, Germany |
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| Abstract: | Sensation involves active movement of sensory organs, but it remains unknown how position or movement of sensory organs is encoded in cortex. In the rat whisker system, each whisker is represented by an individual cortical (barrel) column. Here, we quantified in awake, head-fixed rats the impact of natural whisker movements on action potential frequencies of single (identified) neurons located in different layers of somatosensory (barrel) cortex. In all layers, we found only weak correlations between spiking and whisker position or velocity. Conversely, whisking significantly increased spiking rate in a subset of neurons located preferentially in layer 5A. This finding suggests that whisker movement could be encoded by population responses of neurons within all layers and by single slender-tufted pyramids in layer 5A. |
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| Keywords: | barrel cortex identified cells action potential morphology |
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