Daniel Feldman, PhD
Professor of Neurobiology
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
UC Berkeley

Coding instability and attentional modulation in the whisker map in somatosensory cortex

Abstract:
Neural codes in sensory cortex are the building blocks of perception, but how these codes balance stability and flexibility remains incompletely understood.  We investigate this question in whisker somatosensory cortex (S1) of mice.  The whisker somatotopic code is transformed from a discrete columnar organization in L4 to an intermixed, salt-and-pepper organization in L2/3. This transformation is shaped by sensory experience.  Using longitudinal 2-photon calcium imaging, we discovered widespread tuning instability among L2/3 pyramidal cells in expert mice performing whisker sensory tasks, despite stable task performance. This tuning instability is structured in the S1 map, revealing separate stable and unstable compartments in L2/3 that may provide distinct information to downstream areas.  To study rapid modulation of whisker coding, we developed a whisker selective attention task.  Mice can rapidly and flexibly shift attention between specific whiskers, which is accompanied by spatially specific modulation of L2/3 pyramidal cells responses in S1.  Together, these approaches reveal robust dynamics in neural coding of tactile stimuli in S1.
 

Host Information:
Shikhar Dhingra, [email protected]

The Columbia Neuroscience Seminar series is a collaborative effort of Columbia's Zuckerman Institute, the Department of Neuroscience, the Doctoral Program in Neurobiology and Behavior and the Columbia Translational Neuroscience Initiative, and with support from the Kavli Institute for Brain Science.